3D printer prints lunar base of regolith

^{European Space Agency project}

In 2011, NASA published its project to build a lunar base with a large number of robots (excavators, bulldozers, shredders, etc.). Now the European Space Agency has proposed an alternative project for 3D printing of a lunar base , using local soil as a building material.

The ESA project was created with the help of architects from Foster + Partners . To print using a printer D-Shape from the British company Monolite. On the moon, the printer can use as a material local soil, regolith.

Regolith is a loose, various-grained debris-dust layer several meters deep. It consists of fragments of igneous rocks, minerals, glass, meteorites, contains a lot of aluminum, iron and titanium. Particles are very small and have a high adhesiveness due to the absence of an oxide film on their surface and high electrification. In general, quite well suited for construction.
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True, regolith alone is not enough: add periclase to the mixture. This is magnesium oxide, burnt magnesia, used, for example, by weight lifters to wipe their hands before trying. Probably, the powder for the printer will have to deliver from the Earth.

The photo shows a half ton building block made by the D-Shape printer as a demonstration. The material used for printing was 99.8% similar to the regolith obtained from basalt rocks of one of the volcanoes in central Italy.



The print head of a 3D printer runs in a six-meter frame. The robot prints at a speed of 2 cubic meters per hour, the final version will print 3.5 cubic meters per hour. Construction of one small building will take about a week.



On the render below ( an enlarged version ) you can see the details of the European Space Agency project. The base consists of four residential modules, of which the central and upper left modules are already completed, and two more are in the last stage of construction. Residential modules are connected by tunnels, each of them has four porthole hatches. The approximate size of the base can be estimated in comparison with the astronaut who stands next to the central module.





It will be rather sad if the technology of 3D-printing of buildings on computer models will first begin on the Moon, and only then will reach the Earth. However, the D-Shape printer recently appeared in the news when the architectural design won a building project in the form of a Möbius ring . This house is promised to be built in 2015, it can become the first residential building on the planet, fully printed on a 3D printer.