Duration: 48 months
Future lunar missions, such as those under ESA’s Terrae Novae programme and NASA’s Artemis, demand rapid, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure deployment. However, traditional construction methods—like monolithic 3D printing, sintered bricks, or prefabricated modules—face critical limitations: high energy consumption, brittleness, logistical constraints, and poor repairability. Transporting Earth-based materials is cost-prohibitive, necessitating innovative in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) solutions.
This thesis proposes a novel approach: tub-like regolith-filled shell bricks. By leveraging a thin (10 cm) regolith-binder shell filled with loose regolith, the design reduces binder content from 10 wt% to 2.2 wt% while maintaining structural integrity and radiation protection. The geometry-driven solution minimizes material transport, simplifies robotic assembly, and enhances fault tolerance.
Key innovations include:
Reduced binder dependency through passive regolith filling, cutting Earth-supplied material needs by 78%.
Design of geometrically optimized, dome-compatible bricks that minimize the need for complex construction equipment, enabling efficient robotic or semi-autonomous assembly.
Design and testing of a small-scale end-to-end prototype payload to demonstrate feasibility.
The project will:
Define performance requirements and simulate brick geometries using finite element modeling (FEM).
Fabricate and test prototypes under lunar-relevant conditions (thermal cycling, vacuum, impact).
Impact: This approach could revolutionize lunar construction, offering scalable, low-complexity infrastructure for habitats, landing pads, and radiation shields—aligning with ESA’s and Artemis’s goals for autonomous, sustainable extraterrestrial bases. Potential terrestrial applications include disaster-resilient and modular civil engineering.
