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During the project activities, the authors proposed a conceptual framework, which utilizes resources available in situ through the chemical and physical processes associated with agriculture; the soil and CO2 (if present) are transformed into fibrous plant matter, harvested and finally converted into mechanical and structural components.

In order for off-Earth top surface structures built from regolith to protect astronauts from radiation, they need to be several metres thick. With support from European Space Agency (ESA) and Vertico, the Technical University Delft (TUD) advanced research into constructing habitats in empty lava tubes on Mars in order to create subsurface habitats. By building below ground level not only natural protection from radiation is achieved but also thermal insulation because the temperature below ground is more stable.

Space missions benefit greatly by the capability of the on-board GNC system to adapt rapidly to unknown environment. Autonomous vision-based navigation is a particular technology under implementation in several ESA missions. One of the most interesting applications in that field is the proximity operations around a small asteroid, like those in HERA.
The goal of this activity was to develop a navigation algorithm with the capability to fly over an unknown terrain and achieve better navigation performances than current vision-based techniques based on unknown feature tracking.

Heating samples to extract volatiles is a standard way to characterise solid samples. By heating a sample and recording the temperature profile results it can explain a lot about the nature of those volatiles and allow them to be collected and analysed further. This technique is, in principle, a standard process in terrestrial laboratories and the same principle is applied in-situ for planetary analysis where solid samples are delivered to an oven, which is sealed and heated to produce signatures of the volatiles.