Moonshot+: Lunar Architecture and Infrastructure
Year: 2024-25
Project leader: Henriette Bier
Project team: Henriette Bier, Arwin Hidding, Vera Laszlo (Robotic Building, Architecture) and Seyran Khademi (AiDAPT, Architecture and Computer Science); Robin Oval (Structural Engineering, Civil Engineering); Raj Thilak Rajan (leader Moonshot), Prem Sundaramoorthy, Fabio Sebastiano, and Chris Verhoeven (Microelectronics, Computer Science); Luka Peternel (Cognitive Robotics, Mechanical Engineering); Alessandra Menicucci and Angelo Cervone (Space Engineering, Aerospace Engineering), and and Reza Sabzevari (Aerospace Structures and Materials, Aerospace Engineering).
Supervisors / Collaborators / Partners: Kees Kaan (TU Delft); Advenit Makaya (ESA) and Volker Ruitinga (Vertico)
Funding: 150K
Moonshot+ is an extension of the Moonshot program [1] designed to involve a broader range of stakeholders, both within and beyond TU Delft, who are actively participating in and relevant to space exploration. The first Work Package (WP) in this context is ‘Lunar Architecture and Infrastructure’. Bringing together inter-faculties education and research [2], this WP aims to enable the next generation of experts to realize critical infrastructure for sustainable space exploration. It involves graduation projects starting 2024-25 that are building upon previous knowledge developed in BSc-MSc courses offered 2019-22 separately at respective faculties with students meeting ad-hoc in a rather unstructured manner [3]. With the proposed inter-faculties education, students will have the opportunity to work together in a more structured manner, possibly, in the Collaborative Design Lab [4], which is a ‘cutting-edge facility that offers a collaborative environment for concurrent and integrated system design activities’.
As part of Moonshot, Moonshot+ links education and research playing a pivotal role in advancing space exploration by training the next generation of experts capable of designing, constructing, and maintaining the critical infrastructure required for sustainable space colonization. It directly contributes to the broader goals of expanding humanity's presence beyond Earth's orbit by developing an autarkic system for building and operating off-Earth infrastructure from locally obtained materials. Results of Moonshot+ will be disseminated worldwide and will create opportunities for new research and education related activities.
The first Moonshot+ project is the Moon Station competition that aims to promote international education cooperation and inspire the young generation to advance human future space exploration.
The second project is Robotic Terrain Mapping implemented in collaboration with U Palermo, Associazione Naturalistica I Nebrodi, and U Chieti-Pescara, followed up by the start of the interfaculty course Lunar Architecture and Infrastructure which aims to develop an autarkic design to construction and operation system for building and maintaining architecture and infrastructure.
[1] Moonshot: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2023/lr/tu-delft-aims-for-lunar-exploration-with-moonshot-program
[2] Rhizome 1.0 and 2.0: http://cs.roboticbuilding.eu/index.php/2019MSc3 and http://cs.roboticbuilding.eu/index.php/Rhizome2
[3] CS-wiki: http://cs.roboticbuilding.eu/index.php/2019Studios
[4] CDL: https://www.tudelft.nl/lr/cdl