NASA intends to build a moon base for astronauts and citizens to reside in by 2040.
The US space agency has given a $60 million contract to a Texas-based building technology firm to build a property on the lunar surface for both astronauts and civilians.
The goal is to launch a massive 3D printer to the moon and cover the construction using lunar concrete.
NASA estimates that by 2040, Americans will be living in moon mansions, according to The New York Times.
While some scientists are doubtful that the achievement is too ambitious, NASA scientists claim that the 2040 target for lunar habitation is fully achievable.
“We’re at a tipping point, and in some ways it feels like a dream sequence,” NASA’s director of technology maturation Niki Werkheiser told the Times. “In other ways, it feels like it was inevitable that we would get here.”
NASA’s increasing willingness to engage with academics and other renowned specialists in the subject, according to Werkheiser, brings the goal closer to reality.
“We’ve got all the right people together at the right time with a common goal, which is why I think we’ll get there,” she said. “Everybody is so ready to take this step together, so if we get our capabilities developed, there’s no reason it’s not possible.”
To make the concept a reality, NASA has established a timeline of important milestones for the mission, which has been called Artemis after Apollo’s twin sister. Four human crew members will be launched into orbit around the moon in November 2024. NASA wants to land people on the moon for the second time in history one year after that voyage.
NASA has teamed with ICON, a Texas-based construction technology business, on the construction side of the project. Following a first round of funding from NASA in 2020, ICON reported in 2022 that it has won an additional $60 million for an outer space construction system.
Bjarke Ingels Group and SEArch+ architects have also been commissioned to create designs and concepts for the lunar houses.
According to CBS News, another big problem for the project is ensuring that all of the necessary construction supplies and tools are on the moon, especially because rockets must go light.
Transporting supplies from Earth to the Moon, according to Patrick Suermann, interim dean of Texas A&M University’s School of Architecture, which is collaborating with NASA to build a robot-operated space construction system, is “unsustainable.”
“There’s also no Home Depot up there.” So you have to know how to use what’s up there or send whatever you need,” he explained to the Times.
