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.

Approach

To fully focus our energy on the development and assembly of a lunar building block, we make the following assumptions:

• Sufficient solar energy can be generated for our processes.
• An accessible lava tube exists that is stable enough to host a lunar habitat.
• There are no fixed budgets or time constraints in the current project. Nevertheless, we will optimize the processes to be cost-effective and to take a reasonable time.
• Necessary resources that are not available on the Moon, such as robots and construction additives, can be transported from Earth.
• An optimal regolith composition has been identified, and the manufacturing process is assumed to be optimized and functional under lunar conditions.

We will investigate three ISRU-based approaches for block production: (i) concrete extrusion 3D-printing [1, 2], (ii) selective laser sintering or melting without additives [10], and (iii) intelligent packing of loose surface rocks in replacement of 3D-printed elements [6]. Beyond the production method, we aim to design a lunar brick that enables to build a structure that is self-supporting in every part of the construction process and is optimized not only for radiation shielding, but also for robotic production and assembly. The resulting shelter will serve as a basic module that can be scaled in size and number, allowing the creation of diverse and adaptable lunar habitats.

Research questions

1. What block geometry allows for a habitat to be constructed autonomously while at the same time eliminating the need for temporary support during the construction process?
2. Which additive manufacturing technique is most efficient and feasible for producing these structural elements by leveraging ISRU under lunar conditions?
3. What coordination strategies and operational conditions should a swarm of autonomous robots satisfy to assemble these elements efficiently within the lava tube environment?

Planning

Since the project only runs for 10 weeks, tight planning with concrete deliverables is needed to stay on track to achieve our goals. In weeks 1 and 2, we define the problem, select our focus areas, and deliver the twopage problem statement together with a short presentation. Weeks 3 and 4 are dedicated to the literature review and initial concept sketches of building blocks and the assembly process. In weeks 5 and 6, we aim to develop small-scale prototypes and robotic simulations, which form the basis of the mid-term report and presentation. In weeks 7 to 9, the chosen approach is refined: block geometry, swarm-robot assembly logic, and additive manufacturing methods are integrated into an integral design. Finally, in week 10, the results are consolidated into the final report, presentation, and poster. This planning ensures steady progress with clear outputs at each stage, allowing us to demonstrate feasibility while iterating on both design and technical aspects.

References

[1] Ana Anton et al. “TOR ALVA: A 3D CONCRETE PRINTED TOWER”. In: Apr. 2024, pp. 252–259. ISBN: 9781800086357. DOI: 10.2307/jj.11374766.35.

[2] Emilee Z. Chen. Development of Geopolymers for 3D Printing Applications on Mars. Research report as part of the Rhizome 2.0 project. 2023. URL: https://moonshotplus.tudelft.nl/images/1/19/ Chen%2C_Emilee_Development_of_Geopolymers.pdf.

[3] ESA. How much does it cost? URL: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robot ic_Exploration/International_Space_Station/How_much_does_it_cost? (visited on 09/08/2025).

[4] NASA office of inspector general. oig.nasa.gov. 2024. URL: https://oig.nasa.gov/hotline.html. (visited on 09/08/2025).

[5] Tyler Horvath, Paul O. Hayne, and David A. Paige. “Thermal and Illumination Environments of Lunar Pits and Caves: Models and Observations From the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment”. In: Geophysical Research Letters 49.13 (2022), e2022GL099710. DOI: 10.1029/2022GL099710.

[6] R. W. Johns et al. “On-site Robotic Construction with Context-specific Materials”. English. In: Construction Robotics 4.3 (Sept. 2020), pp. 127–140. ISSN: 2509-8780. DOI: 10.1007/s41693-020-00037-6. URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41693-020-00037-6.

[7] Masayuki Naito et al. “Radiation dose and its protection in the Moon from galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles: at the lunar surface and in a lava tube”. In: Journal of Radiological Protection 40.4 (2020), p. 947. DOI: 10.1088/1361-6498/abb120.

[8] NASA.gov. artemis-iii. 2025. URL: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2025/08/18/nasabegins-processing-artemis-iii-moon-rocket-at-kennedy/ (visited on 09/08/2025).

[9] Planetary.org. cost of apollo. 2020. URL: https://www.planetary.org/space- policy/cost- ofapollo (visited on 09/08/2025).

[10] T. M. Tomilina et al. “A Lunar Printer Experiment on Laser Fusion of the Lunar Regolith in the Luna-Grunt Space Project”. In: Cosmic Res 61.4 (2023), pp. 314–323. DOI: 10.1134/S0010952523700302.

[11] Lisa Watson-Morgan. Human Landing System. Presentation at the International Conference on Environmental Systems (Keynote Speaker Presentation), Calgary, Canada. 2023.

[12] Lisa Watson-Morgan et al. “NASA’s Human Landing System: A Sustaining Presence on the Moon”. In: Proceedings of the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC). Baku, Azerbaijan, 2023.