Nebula Public Library

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.

SMARTIE (Smart Resource Management based on Internet of Things to support Off-Earth Manufacturing of Lunar Infrastructures) is an ESA study to assess the requirements, architecture, hardware and software needs and costs for implementation of an Internet of Manufacturing Things (IoMT) for a lunar human base and associated infrastructure. 

Previous ESA Studies, such as the LUNA study 'Artificial Analogue Concepts for Preparing Robotics and Human Exploration on the Moon' identified gaps in European infrastructures to simulate surface operations with lunar soil (simulant) in a vacuum. There exist several vacuum chambers or terrain models such as the coming EAC LUNA facility which can be used for testing equipment either in a vacuum or on a simulated lunar terrain, but not both.