Nebula Public Library

The objective of the study was to investigate the performance and shielding abilities of lunar regolith-based geopolymer when reinforced with basalt fibres and cured under environmental conditions of the lunar surface. The geopolymer building materials should be suitable for
3D-printing on the Moon. Since there is a very limited supply of water on the moon, the study also focuses on lunar geopolymers with a reduced amount of water in the recipes, without the need for raw materials that cannot be resourced locally on the Moon.

Increasingly demanding space-based applications require a large primary mirror diameter, on which the optical instrument resolution depends. However, the mass and volume of a monolithic primary mirror would dramatically increase along with its size, which, in addition to cost and technical issues, is also limited by the available volumen in the launch vehicle fairing.

This study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility, use and functionality of carbon fibre-reinforced flexible epoxy (CFRFE) materials for self-deployable space structures (such as deployable tape-spring hinges) by designing, simulating, manufacturing, testing and correlating a classic (100% carbon fibre-reinforced plastic -rigid resin- CFRP) deployable tape-spring hinge and a CFRFE deployable tape-spring hinge and compare their mechanical and dynamic behaviours.

We have continued our shock physics code calculation studies of DART-like impact events. This includes comparisons of iSALE and SPH code calculations, using a range of strength and structural properties. The effect of porosity was studied in detail by applying different crushcurves, representing materials with varying crushing strength. The crushcurve was found to have a large influence on the outcome, in particular the ejecta properties and momentum transfer.