NASA is now turning to termites and studying “cathedral termite moulds” deep in Australian and African forests and landscapes to develop building systems used on the Moon and in space.
The research came after NASA, more than 40 years ago, started researching the use of sandbag-based building structures “that could provide quiet and cost-effective construction on the Moon.”
The work, inspired by Nader Khalili – an acclaimed Iran-born American architect best known for his inventive structures that incorporate a range of atypical building materials, dates back to the 1980s when Khalili successfully lobbied NASA to test using sandbags to build semi-permanent lunar and space habitats (within space controlled settings).
Mr Khalili, who went on to found CalEarth (the California Institute of Earth Architecture), presented his “Magma Structures” design, based on the Geltaftan System and “Velcro-Adobe” system (later to become Superadobe) at the 1984 NASA symposium, “Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century.”
Now, Associate Professor Jekan Thanga from the University of Arizona Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department is taking Mr Khalili’s concept and merging it with the building system adopted by Australian and African-based termites.
“In the case of the termites, it’s relevant to our off-world challenges,” according to Associate Professor Thanga, who said, “The extreme desert environments the termites face are analogous to lunar conditions.” “Importantly, this whole approach doesn’t rely on water. Most of the Moon is bone-dry desert.”
Working with a team of researchers, he used robot networks to create termite-inspired structures as part of the Artemis program – the modern-day equivalent of the Apollo program (expected to launch in 2026 or 2027).
Associate Professor Thanga said, “The structures contain sensors that aid in construction and then alert astronauts to changes in environmental conditions.”
Working with Tech Launch Arizona, the university’s commercialisation department, lead author Thanga Sivaperuman Muniyasamy presented the research at the American Astronautical Society Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference earlier this month.
“By publishing the paper at the conference, we’re gaining feedback from other experts that helps us move forward,” Mr Muniyasamy said.
Part of the LUNAR-BRIC consortium, the team has partnered with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech and MDA, a space robotics company, to develop technology for Artemis moon landings.
“It’s no accident this team has an academic partner, a commercial partner and a government agency,” Associate Professor Thanga said. “Given the challenges, part of the path is for us to collaborate.”
The moon structures are just a start for the university team and LUNAR-BRIC in their quest to support a space economy, “within a few years of the first successful landing,” he said, “NASA will look to building facilities for long-term habitation and industry, such as environmentally responsible Moon and asteroid mining.”
Adding that lunar regolith, rather than solid building materials, offers the best chance to establish permanent structures in space.
Before adding that astronauts will need “semi-permanent safe shelters” whilst searching for optimal locations to erect permanent buildings before adding that “he is confident the fundamentally simple sandbag structures will be employed.”
For Associate Professor Thanga, the project follows a long journey in studying the architecture of insect social systems—like a termite colony constructing and maintaining a large, complicated mound—to distributed robot networks, in which machines work together cooperatively without human intervention.
“Learning about that helped direct me toward distributed systems for construction,” he said.
The team investigated whether sandbags filled with regolith, soil and mineral fragments from the Moon’s surface could replace traditional building materials for lunar housing, warehouses, control towers, robot garages, landing pads, protective jackets for robots, and blast walls to protect assets during turbulent takeoffs and landings.
The quickly and easily robot-assembled sandbag shelters reduce the material that must be transported to the Moon, provide reasonable climate control, and protect against moonquakes and other hazards.
Robots embed sensors and electronics in the sandbags and fill them with lunar regolith before assembling the structures. Sensors provide location data to help the robots place the sandbags, whilst others supply environmental information and communication capabilities to warn of danger.
The push to embrace atypical construction materials in space comes as NASA – in collaboration with SpaceX, the University of Kyoto and Sumitomo Forestry prepares to launch the first wooden rocket in space.
Known as the LignoSat probe, the satellite uses magnolia wood, which scientists discovered is the ideal alternative to earth-polluting metals used in satellites.
The push to use biodegradable materials in satellites comes as the global space industry looks for cleaner, greener and more sustainable materials amid a purge of space waste that is now littering the earth.
“All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” according to Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with the Kyoto University, who spoke to the Guardian on Saturday, adding that “eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.”
According to NASA, millions of debris, including more than 34,000 larger units such as discarded rocket stages and 2,550 of Earth’s 5,850 satellites, orbit the Earth before eventually becoming earth-polluting space waste.