Moon Camp Project Gallery 2023-2024 

Lunar Base by Artful Astronauts

Bridgeway Academy  Deva-    Romania 11 years old   1 / 1 English Moon

External link for Tinkercad 3D design

Artful Astronauts is a resourceful team that makes use of creative and innovative ideas in the design of the lunar base.

The purpose of our Moon camp is to act as a sustainable settlement intended for interdisciplinary scientific research and further space exploration.

We opted for a compact design in order to reduce the external surface area thus minimizing energy use and construction material waste while optimizing space management.

It is located on the rim of the Shackelton crater that receives near-continuous sunlight, ideal for solar power generation. Moreover, the crater’s permanently shadowed interior contains water ice deposits essential for providing water, breathable air, and even rocket fuel.

It is composed of four pressurized domes with an advanced air recycling system plus the initial lunar capsule serving as an airlock equipped with a magnetic separation duster. In the future, we will also test a slide-in astronaut spacesuit unit with the intention of limiting the adverse effects of the regolith dust.

The domes have a 3D-printed protective shield manufactured by sintering lunar regolith layer-by-layer using concentrated sunlight. They contain:

• a habitation area
• a fitness area
• a hydroponic greenhouse housing beneficial insects, like bees and ladybugs
• a science laboratory containing a 3D printer, computers, microscopes and chemistry sets.

We also designed different types of lunar vehicles:

• a landing module to travel between the Gateway and the lunar surface
• a pressurized lunar rover inspired by spider biomimicry, capable of exploring difficult terrains, like lunar lava tubes
• autonomous cargo robots used for lunar prospecting, collecting samples, carrying materials…
• a multipurpose rover equipped with a solar concentrator intended for :
  • solar 3D printing of lunar regolith
  • paving –  the construction of roads and landing pads (the suspended dust generated by lunar rovers is a significant risk and it can affect the systems of the exploration vehicles).

Additional infrastructure:

• solar panels for power
• a Helium-3 extraction site
• a water extraction site:
  • A solar-powered boiler sends hot water to the bottom of the crater. Some of the melted ice is recycled back into the boiler while the rest is filtered and used for producing:
    • potable and non-potable water
    • gaseous oxygen, liquid oxygen and hydrogen for fuel
    • hydroponics nutrients with beneficial minerals naturally present in the water ice
• an AI-assisted heliostats field collector and parabolic dish concentrator used for:
  • ISRU oxygen production, water sublimation, gas separation (Helium-3, oxygen, hidrogen…), processing ilmenite or volcanic glass …

Our main focus is on sustainability, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), minimal waste and innovative recycling systems that take into consideration the environmental impact on the Moon system.

This project showcases the ingenuity required for space exploration highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary skills and collaboration.

N.B. Due to the fact that our Tinkercad model is slow to load and we could not include additional elements we decided to add the heliostat field and the multipurpose rover as a separate project: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/5zOXloXa3Rd-heliostat-field-multipurpose-rover

For better visualization, we also rendered our entire project in Blender  (see picture : Blender Model).

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