Application of Regolith Polymer Composite FFF Construction in Simulated Lunar Conditions

NASA’s Artemis program has the lofty goal of creating a sustained lunar presence to provide unprecedented opportunities for scientific discovery and to ensure American industry’s access to the unlimited resources and commercial potential in space. To achieve this goal, NASA must incrementally develop and expand its capabilities beyond the short lunar stays of the Apollo program to a robust continued presence with infrastructure and equipment to reduce mission risk by providing safer and more reliable access to the surface, its resources, and protection from the environment. Kennedy Space Center’s Swamp Works Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations laboratory has partnered with AI SpaceFactory to develop the architectural and structural design of a robotically constructable unpressurized shelter. The shelter, called Lina is designed to protect astronauts and surface assets from radiation, meteoroid impact, moon quakes and thermal gradients. A Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) construction process using regolith polymer composites was developed. The construction system and associated print parameters are discussed along with the environmental simulation equipment and a summary of test conditions. Test samples were printed in simulated lunar dirty thermal vacuum conditions (~-180 C, ~10-3 torr) and subjected to a series of tests. The resulting strength properties are summarized here, the full details of the material characteristics are provided in a related paper. Lina’s structural design criteria and the resulting initial structure design are detailed in two related papers, this paper presents an update to Lina’s design based on the achieved material strength properties. Finally, a scaled down version of the updated Lina was built on a regolith simulant surface using a novel anchoring technique in simulated lunar vacuum conditions.