NASA might not make it back to the Moon as soon as it planned, but Artemis III is slated to land on the lunar surface in the next few years. Unlike the Apollo program, NASA intends to use Artemis to establish a permanent human presence on Earth's satellite. Those early explorers will need shelters, and a team at the University of Arizona has developed a sandbag-based building system that could provide quick and cost-effective construction on the Moon. And we could have termites to thank.
The work was led by Jekan Thanga from the university's Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. He originally became interested in sandbag structures when studying the work of architect Nader Khalili. In the 1980s, Khalili proposed that NASA use sandbags to build semi-permanent lunar and space habitats. He went on to build Earth-bound structures with his SuperAdobe sandbags.
Thanga says he merged that concept with the impressive cathedral termite mounds found in Africa and Australia. These structures can soar as high as 23 feet and last as long as 80 years. The insects building these tiered structures are constantly remodeling the surface component to regulate conditions inside the colony. According to Thanga, the requirements of termites living in arid environments are remarkably similar to the ones astronauts will face on the Moon.
While the team refers to this as a "sandbag" structure, the plan is to fill the bags with lunar regolith. This approach also makes sense because it requires no water, which will be a limited resource on the Moon, even if we can harvest the ice hiding in the lunar soil. And because the proposed structures are built from sandbags, they're easy to modify, expand, and break down. It could be used to build housing, warehouses, robot garages, protective barriers around launchpads, and more.
The team is working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and commercial partners to develop the building system, which is more than just bags of moondust. Thanga has also designed a network of termite-inspired robots that will be able to automate most of the assembly. The bags will contain sensors, some of which signal to the robots where to place new bags. The others will be able to give astronauts data about the lunar environment.
The work is funded by a $500,000 grant from NASA through the agency's Space Technology Artemis Research program (M-STAR). Thanga believes the lunar sandbag system could be commercialized for future Moon exploration. His team has worked with the university's Tech Launch Arizona group to file patents on the distributed computer processing networks that would govern the sandbag robots. The robots themselves are still a work in progress.
