14 DAY TRIAL // The future of space exploration may, indeed, be a little brighter than we thought, considering how modern initiatives completely break off from older ones and offer new approaches on decades-old themes, such as the Moon landing, or the building of a lunar outpost. Researchers at the Astrobotic Technology Inc., working together with colleagues from the Robotics Institute at the Carnegie Mellon University, ponder the idea of sending automated construction robots ahead to the Moon, in order to facilitate the construction of a future base in space.
The purpose of the mower-sized machines would be to clean the landing site of a future lunar mission, as well as to prepare the soil for the construction of the buildings themselves. This innovative idea could also take into account recent inventions that allow for the creation of bricks on the spot, directly from Moon soil and various chemicals. The current study, sponsored by NASA, seeks to determine if such an option is viable and if it has any chance of success.
“NASA faces a challenge in planning the layout for its outpost, which is expected to begin operations in 2020. For efficient cargo transfer, the landing site needs to be close to the outpost's crew quarters and laboratories. Each rocket landing and takeoff, however, will accelerate lunar grit outwards from the pad. With no atmosphere to slow it down, the dry soil would sandblast the outpost,” Carnegie Mellon professor of robotics William Whittaker, who is also the chairman and the chief technical officer at Astrobotic Technology, explains.
Keep in mind that a future permanent landing site on the Moon has to be near the outpost, but that the proximity means that debris ejected by the rockets' blasters could damage the structures. Currently, the team sees two possibilities to address this issue – either by building a protective semi-circular barrier between the landing site and the base, or by cleaning the entire surface around the pad, so that dust and rock fragments would not get displaced in the first place.
The second option “might reduce the need to build protective berms. To discern the best approach, early robotic scouting missions need to gather on-site information about the soil's cohesion levels and whether rocks and gravel of the right size can be found at the site,” John Kohut, the chief executive officer at Astrobotic, says. For the first option, scientists uphold that it would take a pair of large rovers approximately 6 months to build a berm.