The International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction
Publications / 2011 Proceedings of the 28th ISARC, Seoul, Korea
Automation System for Lunar Landing Pad
Concrete needs long time (28 day) for curing to reach enough strength in construction site. Also, it needs various materials. Thus, most of the construction sites in Extreme Environment select to deliver the prefabricated concrete modules. To construct structures on the Moon one has to select proper materials considering safety, cost, and procurement. Lunar concrete concept is quoted ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization). It only needs pressure and heat on lunar soil mixed with polymer. Moreover, the process of production is simple and short. This idea has born as terrestrial concrete request water, cement, and reinforces steel which has limit to manufacture in the Moon or to bring the massive resource from Earth because of the high cost. According to NASA and other space exploration roadmaps they are planning manned lunar exploration and building infrastructures in the Moon. This requires multiple landing of rockets that causes fine dust in the Moon which has harmful effect on human and infrastructures. Therefore, there is a need of lunar landing pad developed by ISRU. In addition as long term human existence and working on the lunar environment is dangerous automation system applied on rover needs to be developed. This paper introduces the lunar landing pad manufactured by the new type waterless concrete for lunar construction and presents automation system prototype for lunar launching pad construction.