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Energy-efficient regolith compactor for surface construction

Thu, 06/22/2023 - 11:50
Start Date: 
2021
Programme: 
Discovery
End Date: 
2022
Programme Reference: 
20-D-T-TEC-03-l
Country: 
Poland
Contractor: 
Astronika
Status: 
Closed
Description: 

The objective of the project was to design, develop and test the compaction device breadboard in a regolith simulant testbed. An experimental test campaign aimed to verify that the compaction device can be successfully used to improve the surface geotechnical properties of two different regolith simulants: GreenSpar-250 analogous to lunar Highlands, and AGK-2010 analogous to lunar Mare regions.

The activity investigated the compaction as a viable large-scale horizontal construction method on the Moon, as previously proposed in Phillips et al. (1992), and utilised terrestrial analogies (Chen & Fang, 2008) along with best practices (Kwaśniewski et al., 2022) for compaction performance monitoring. The current improved design of the device (TRL 4) could be further studied and developed for a lunar use-case scenario, as lunar surface exploration capabilities and needs intensify within the following decades.

Application Domain: 
Exploration
Technology Domain: 
24 - Materials and Manufacturing Processes
Competence Domain: 
2-Structures, Mechanisms, Materials, Thermal
Keywords: 
ISRU
Off-Earth manufacturing
Regolith
Executive summary: 
Article: