BIG has worked on multiple concepts for the Moon and Mars in the past several years. Its massive Mars Science City, meant to simulate the environmental conditions on Mars for use as a training ground and research station, is currently under construction in Dubai.
The partnership is part of NASA’s Artemis program, a literal moonshot to put humans on lunar turf by 2024, and the stepping stone to an eventual Mars mission. That means constructing a long-term habitat on the moon—Project Olympus, a 3D-printed, sustainable lunar habitat that will be capable of protecting inhabitants from exposure to radiation, extreme temperature differentials, and the constant pelting of micrometeors.
The partnership is part of NASA’s Artemis program, a literal moonshot to put humans on lunar turf by 2024, and the stepping stone to an eventual Mars mission. That means constructing a long-term habitat on the moon—Project Olympus, a 3D-printed, sustainable lunar habitat that will be capable of protecting inhabitants from exposure to radiation, extreme temperature differentials, and the constant pelting of micrometeors.
“Building on our experience with BIG’s Mars Science City. We are working to develop the first permanent structure on the Moon resilient to the hostile lunar environment where the cost of payload transportation requires rigorous efficiency. We have explored various building forms ideal for containing atmospheric pressure and optimized for protection from cosmic and solar radiation.
The habitat will be designed with the inherent redundancy required for extraterrestrial buildings, while also using groundbreaking robotic construction that uses only in-situ resources with zero waste left behind. With the technologies and efficiency parameters developed for the construction of extraterrestrial buildings, Project Olympus will also help us to build sustainably on planet Earth as we strive to reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment.”
Martin Voelkle, a partner at BIG.
While scant information on the actual design and construction methodology of Project Olympus has been made public thus far, from the renderings, it looks like BIG has designed a network of short, toroidal structures that would be autonomously constructed and broken into different modules based on usage. Using the technology demonstrated in the 2018 competition, ICON will begin developing and testing prototypes of potential 3D printing techniques at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, using artificial lunar soil.
No construction timeline or budget for Project Olympus has been revealed yet.
