project09:2025Msc2JIP

Problem statement

Humanity is on the verge of a new era of space exploration. After more than fifty years since the Apollo missions, international efforts such as NASA’s Artemis program are paving the way for a permanent human presence on the Moon. Unlike the short visits of the past, these upcoming missions will require long-term habitation that will allow astronauts to live, work, and innovate directly on the lunar surface for extended periods of time. Yet, transforming this vision into reality poses unparalleled challenges and hurdles. The surface of the Moon is exposed to frequent micrometeorite impacts, intense radiation (up to 2200 mSv/event during solar flares and coronal mass ejections [7]), and extreme temperature fluctuations between day (420 K) and night (100 K) [5]. Recent studies show that lunar lava tubes may be able to provide a natural shield against both GCRs and SEPs [7], micrometeorites, and offer a much more stable thermal environment [5], making them highly attractive candidates for the location of the first human habitats. Moreover, transporting sufficient construction materials from Earth would be prohibitively costly and unsustainable, which makes ISRU a necessity. To enable sustainable lunar construction, this project proposes the design of modular building blocks fabricated through additive manufacturing processes with lunar regolith. These blocks are intended to be interlocking and structurally robust, ensuring resilience against the harsh lunar environment. Once produced, a coordinated swarm of specialized autonomous robots must be able to efficiently assemble those blocks into habitats. This approach aims to minimize reliance on Earth-supplied materials, reduce logistical costs, and eliminate the risk for astronauts. With the ultimate goal of conceiving a system and design that allows for the creation of scalable, adaptable structures that can evolve to meet the needs of long-term lunar missions.

Business Context

Both public agencies and private companies view lunar infrastructure as a strategic step toward Mars exploration and long-term space settlement, making this project highly relevant to ongoing programs. At the same time, the technologies involved such as swarm robotics, additive manufacturing with local materials, and autonomous assembly can generate concrete spin-offs on Earth, particularly in sustainable construction, mining automation, and infrastructure development in remote or hazardous environments.

• Primary stakeholders include space agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA), private aerospace companies (SpaceX, Blue Origin, ispace), robotic companies (Vertico), and academic researchers in space, robotics, materials, and architecture.

• Secondary stakeholders are governments, future astronauts, and, from a more futuristic point of view, space tourists; while society at large benefits from advances in sustainable and resource-efficient construction technologies.

Sustainability

SpaceX’s Starship is currently selected as the main lander for the Artemis Program’s Human Landing System (HLS), with Blue Origin’s Blue moon selected as a second option. Although both landers are able to transport large amounts of payload to the lunar surface, 100 tons and 20 tons respectively, they both will require refueling in LEO to reach the moon (around 14 for the SpaceX proposal [12] and several (1-4) [11] for Blue Origin’s lander). Each launch will result in many tons of carbon emissions. Since the construction process aims to maximize ISRU as much as possible, which minimizes the amount of launches required and thus the environmental impact. Furthermore, the assembly process of the base is meant to be fully autonomous, negating the need to have astronauts on the moon during construction, reducing costs and risk to human life.

SMART objectives

The objective of this project is to design a viable strategy for establishing a long-term human habitat within an existing lunar lava tunnel. To accomplish this, we employ the SMART framework to structure the objective in terms of specificity, measurability, assignability, realism, and time-related considerations, ensuring that the goal is concrete and actionable.

• Specific: Design a fully automated human-less manufacturing procedure for a long-term human habitat in an existing lunar lava tunnel using additive manufacturing and robotic swarms, while minimizing shipment costs for material and equipment.

• Measurable: Assuming a shipping cost of around 1200 dollars per gram [4], the feasibility and effectiveness of the design is evaluated by keeping track of the amount of material and equipment required form Earth.

• Assignable: The team as a whole is responsible for meeting the assigned objectives, although the project contains both elements of architecture and engineering and work will be allocated according to individual expertise.

• Realistic: Humanity’s interest in the space-race has quickly faded after the moon landing. Current ESA budget stands around 8 billion dollars, whereas previous similar projects, such as the construction of the ISS and the Apollo missions, had budgets of respectively 150+ and 257+ billion dollars[3][9] (actualized to the 2020s). Recent geopolitical instability, energy crises and environmental concerns have further reduced government’s willingness to spend on such projects, therefore, minimizing costs is of great importance.

• Time-related: Both NASA and ESA plan to return to the Moon by the late 2020s and to establish the first support infrastructure soon after [8]. While no precise timeline has yet been defined for the beginning of construction, it is anticipated that the first permanent structures could emerge in the 2030s.