Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement: Multifaceted Planetary Construction Materials Development

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s additive construction with mobile emplacement (ACME) project is developing construction materials with which infrastructure elements, including habitats, will be additively constructed for planetary surface missions. These materials must meet requirements such as the ability to be produced from available in situ resources to eliminate the cost of launching materials from Earth, the ability to be emplaced via three dimensional building techniques, the ability to resist aging in extreme environments including radiation and micrometeorite bombardment, and the ability to provide the necessary structural integrity for a given building. This paper reviews the constraints placed on such planetary construction materials and details the work of the ACME team in characterizing materials that could one day construct planetary surface structures on Mars or the Moon. Material compositions, compressive strength, and requirements for additive construction on planetary surfaces are discussed. Due to the multifunctional requirements of the material, an optimization is necessary to balance between the site-specific regolith composition, emplacement via additive construction techniques, and characteristics of the final structure.