What steps can be taken to ensure future space settlements on the Moon and Mars are constructed with the same efficiency as on Earth? This is what a recent NASA Early Stage Innovations award hopes to address as six separate researchers across the country received a three-year funding grant worth almost $750,000 to study the prospects of welding on the Moon. This research has the potential to develop more efficient and cheaper methods for constructing space settlements without the need to receive fully assembled components from Earth.
For the study, the researchers aspire to develop new methods for welding on the Moon. To accomplish this, they plan to simulate the lunar environment, including potentially the vacuum of space and extreme temperature fluctuations, with the goal of ascertaining how welded metals are influenced compared to welding on Earth. They will use a combination of ground-based experiments and space-based models to determine the most efficient welding methods that can be employed on the Moon.
“It would be very hard to establish regular machine shops on the moon’s surface to manufacture metal structures as we do on Earth,” said Dr. Wei Li, who is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas and one of the grant’s recipients. “However, it could be possible to use spacecraft to ship metal components from the Earth to the moon, then deploy welding technology there to assemble the components into large structures that could enable the establishment of a human community.”
Image of Dr. Wei Li (Credit: The University of Texas)
This research comes as NASA plans to land humans on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972 with its Artemis program, along with landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface in history. NASA has stated the goal of Artemis is to develop new technologies that will enable humanity to establish a long-term presence in outer space, including eventual human missions to Mars.
What new discoveries into welding on the Moon will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: EurekAlert!, The University of Texas at Dallas, NASA
