In the space settlement prototype, the possibility of building a base from extraterrestrial soil in conditions of a different gravity will be simulated.
The Texas company ICON received $57.2 million from the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) for the Olympus project, a technology that will allow humanity to build bases on the Moon and Mars using local material.
About this reported on the NASA website.
The signed contract with NASA will help the company improve the technology, which it has been developing since 2018. Then ICON built a fully 3D printed house for the first time. Subsequently, whole settlements in the USA and Mexico arose from such houses.
The Olympus project has existed since 2020. It’s actually a prototype space settlement — a 3D-printed simulation of a Martian habitat called Mars Dune Alpha that NASA will use to train astronauts for long-duration missions.
ICON plans to use the proceeds to learn how lunar soil, or regolith, behaves under the influence of lunar gravity, using simulated and real soil samples obtained by the Apollo missions.
The company will also test its hardware and software in a space mission that simulates lunar gravity.
