The contract runs through 2028 and supports Artemis, a mission for long-term human exploration of the Moon.
The project will help build infrastructures such as landing pads, habitats, capsules, and roads on the lunar surface and Mars, using extrusion-based additive construction technology (3D printing) and local materials like lunar regolith. In the latest update, NASA awarded Austin-based company ICON a contract to continue ICON's Olympus construction system in partnership with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. In response, figures like Buckminster Fuller, Foster + Partners, SOM, and BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, in collaboration with emerging businesses such as ICON and SEArch+, have nourished the architectural catalog in outer space. As NASA plans for long-term human exploration of the Moon and Mars under Artemis and CHAPEA missions, new technologies are required to meet the unique challenges of living and working in another world. Image Courtesy of ICON/BIG-Bjarke Ingels Groupįrom inflatable and 3D-printed structures to entire habitats, architecture plays an unprecedented role in space exploration missions. Many of us question why we should sink so much of our energy – both effort and resources – into such a task, when there are plenty of more pressing matters to address here on Earth?Ī new award from NASA will support ICON in developing construction technology that could be used on the Moon and Mars. The biggest challenge to Mars habitation and eventual colonization is humanity itself, and our indecision. NASA’s recently-released Moon to Mars Architecture Concept Review is a ‘study of the hardware and operations needed for human missions to the Moon and Mars,’ leading to long-term scientific discovery and human habitation in deep space.īut there’s a long way to go before we get there – and not just the 140 million miles (average distance to Mars). ‘In order to safeguard the existence of humanity,’ he explains, ‘we need to become a multi-planetary civilization.’ Musk says he’s laser-focused on ensuring we make a second home elsewhere in space, and has his sights set on Mars. SpaceX founder and science-fiction fan Elon Musk is attempting to make the fiction of space travel a scientific reality.
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