In recent years, mankind has taken further steps towards unlocking the secrets of the moon, with plans to establish a permanent base of operations on its surface. NASA's Moon base will be the first of its kind and will revolutionize exploration of our nearest celestial neighbor. With the base, scientists will be able to conduct research and experiments in an environment almost identical to Earth, unprecedentedly advancing our knowledge of the moon and its properties. From the Moon base, humanity’s exploration of the universe can expand even further.

ICON is pioneering the construction of a Moon base

In November 2022, ICON, a leader in advanced construction technologies and large-scale 3D printing, announced it received a contract to build Lunar Surface Construction System with a $57.2 Million NASA award. The award is under Phase III of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The contract is built upon NASA and Department of Defense funding for ICON’s Project Olympus aimed at researching and developing space construction systems to support intended exploration on the Moon and beyond.

This ICON’s Olympus system is aimed to be a multi-purpose construction system mainly using local Lunar and Martian resources as construction materials to increase NASA efforts and commercial organizations in establishing a sustained lunar presence. This is explained well by Jason Ballard, the ICON co-founder and CEO. According to him, “To change the space exploration paradigm from ‘there and back again’ to ‘there to stay,’ we’re going to need robust, resilient, and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the Moon and other planetary bodies. We’re pleased that our research and engineering to date have demonstrated that such systems are indeed possible, and we look forward to now making that possibility a reality. The final deliverable of this contract will be humanity’s first construction on another world, and that is going to be a pretty special achievement.”

The construction process and material

To support the NASA Artemis program, ICON intends to bring its enhanced software and hardware into space through a lunar gravity simulation flight. The company also wants to work with lunar regolith samples returned from Apollo missions and regolith simulants to ascertain their mechanical behavior during simulated lunar gravity. The findings would provide results that will inform future lunar construction methods for the wider space community, such as important infrastructure like blast shields, landing pads, and roads. Further, the technology will help create the vital infrastructure needed to have a sustainable lunar economy and later longer lunar habitation.

For Niki Werkheiser, the director of technology maturation in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, "To explore other worlds, we need innovative new technologies adapted to those environments and our exploration needs. Pushing this development forward with our commercial partners will create the capabilities we need for future missions."

Meanwhile, NASA revealed that via its Artemis program, the Moon would be the first off-Earth place to have a sustainable surface exploration. And that establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon needs more than rockets. In fact, to have a sustained lunar presence, advanced infrastructure needs to be established on the Moon to offer better thermal, micrometeorite protection and radiation. ICON’s development plans follow a “live off the land” method by prioritizing the usage of in-situ/native materials discovered on the Moon. Overall, from habitats to landing pads, these combined or collective efforts are influenced or motivated by the quest to make humans spacefaring civilization agents.