moon_camp

Moon Camp Explorers Gallery 2021-2022

In Moon Camp Explorers each team’s mission is to 3D design a complete Moon Camp using Tinkercad. They also have to explain how they will use local resources, protect astronauts from the dangerous of space and describe the living and working facilities.

Team: Team 2022

Agrupamento de Escolas Pedro Eanes Lobato  Amora    Portugal 9   6 / 6   Highly Commended Design – ESA Member states

External link for 3d

Project description

Our Moon Camp project was built to study how human life will adapt to life on the Space and Moon.

This project was thought to take at least 5 astronauts for the first time, each one with a specialization so they can work independently. After a few months, the camp can take other astronauts.

Will have some accommodations and workrooms, such as bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, working labs, a solar and a nuclear power plant, a command center, and a central main entrance, each of them made using different modules. The modules will be compact, so it makes it each to transport and maintain the right conditions for human living.

We’ll build underground and cover our facilities with the Moon regolith (about 1 m thick).

We can’t forget the security of the camp because there is no atmosphere on the Moon, so if we suffer meteors attacks, we’ll have some defense laser towers to protect the camp. It’s important to have satellites that will help us to contact Earth and have communications and, search the Moon’s surface. When living on the Moon’s surface, will have our camp protected with docks, doors, and airlocks.

Where do you want to build your Moon Camp?

Close to the lunar poles

Why did you choose this location?

We know that the Moon is a dangerous place. It suffers meteor attacks, radiation, and exposure to the sunlight for 14 days in a row, and because of this, its surface is too hot or too cold for human life to be safe. We cannot also forget that the gravity on the Moon is lower than on Earth.

If we build our camp in a lunar lava tube, near the South pole of the Moon, where there are known to have pools of ice and areas with light and shadow, it will improve the quality of life of the astronauts.

How do you plan to build your Mooncamp? Which materials will you use?

Arriving on the moon a deployable module will be launched to set the perimeter where the astronauts work from. Robots will work to prepare the terrain.

The module will be covered with regolith with the help of 3D printers made for that purpose. Every single material sent from Earth in this mission will be integrated into the shelter.

The main materials mined on the moon, such as rocks, and regolith (rich in oxygen, silicon, calcium, iron, magnesium, aluminum, and titanium minerals) will help in the construction.

Water
Food
Electricity
Air
Protection

Astronauts will take the first drinking water from Earth. As we know, humans need a large amount of water. With the help of a recycling machine, they will recycle their urine, and sweat (as they do at the ISS nowadays).
If the ice on the moon will prove to be drinkable, then after treatment, part of it will be also stored in containers to be distributed to all complexes.

On the first journey to the Moon, the astronauts will take with them supplies so they can survive the first 90 to 180 days – they take from Earth frozen and dried food (thinking about all necessities from the food wheel) and other components such as vitamins, proteins, and minerals.
They will bring some tolls to start a greenhouse and there, they will grow several seeds, plants, and fruit using hydroponic methods, to be their source of fresh food. They also will do experiments by growing green algae to have fresh nutrients at their disposal.

For our base to have power will need a solar power station with photovoltaic panels (that will be in selected places at the beginning of the mission to have power even when it is night) that will capture the sunlight and store the excessing energy into big batteries to be distributed, through the 14 days of night, to all complex.
There are on the Moon some materials that we can use to produce more solar panels, such as silicon.

We’ve learned that there’s ice on the moon. The astronauts will mine that ice. Using the electrolysis of water, it will turn hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O2) into water (H2O) and, storing its compounds in special containers, taking special measures.
Our greenhouse will have plants and algae that will reduce CO2 and produce oxygen (O2) that will help clean the breathable air.
Automatic systems will control the atmosphere (oxygen, humidity, pressure) so it will be appropriate to human lives.
On the Moon, there’s no atmosphere so we must be careful with the air waste. All exits will have airlocks.

To protect the astronauts from radiation and extreme temperature changes will build under the regolith.
To protect the camp from the meteor attacks will have satellites and defense laser towers.

Describe a day on the Moon for one of your Moon Camp astronauts

We know that the time on the moon is not the same as that on Earth, so we will need to prepare a schedule that will be modified when needed. Although a day on the moon lasts for 14 days in a row, astronauts must rest, so their schedule will be like the hours on Earth (24 hours).

The astronaut will wake up early to see the sun rising, he will take some pictures of it and will have his breakfast.

He will start his/her morning by working out for 1 hour. After he’ll visit his experiments to make some registration on the evolution and make some adjustments. After that, he’ll go to work in the lab.

By lunchtime, he’ll have lunch (1 hour) with the other astronauts and rest a little bit.

In the middle of the afternoon, he will meet with the crew.

Before dinner, he will return and have 1 hour of physical exercise.

To end the day, one of best things to do on the Moon is to watch for a while the Planet Earth and let us amaze by its beauty.

By the end of the day, he will have time to rest, but before sleep, he can take some quality time, calling home, taking pictures, reading a book, good to the swimming pool, or even playing with the game machines. Astronauts must sleep and rest so they can not only enjoy the honor to be a Moon Astronaut but also do their work well.

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