Robotic Infrastructure Construction and Maintenance Systems for the Moon, Mars, and Other Missions

Building infrastructure in the extreme environments of space is exceptionally challenging, creating a need for lightweight, durable, economic, and remotely deployable initial infrastructure to pave the way for future activities on the Moon and Mars. Autonomous construction systems will be necessary to develop infrastructure in the remote and extreme environments encountered in space exploration. The NASA ARMADAS system of autonomously assembled modular structures presents the opportunity for building infrastructure that is both suited to transportation constraints and mission adaptive through inherent reconfigurability. NASA and M3 are developing the capabilities and near-term application of this system towards a deployment-ready solution for in-space infrastructure development.

This work and similar projects will become the foundation for robotic construction standards, illustrating that this can be scaled from modest to immense structures. This work will also increase domain knowledge of commercial and flight specific robotic design requirements for system integration with in-space manufacturing and sustainable massless space exploration goals.