Robotic ISRU Construction of Planetary Landing and Launch Pad

NASA applications include building landing pads on planetary surfaces covered in regolith such as for example Mars and the Moon. Rocket thrust during landing or take off can damage not only surrounding infrastructure, robots and astronauts but the launch vehicle itself. Several subsystems developed under this project will also be beneficial to in Situ Resource Utilization (e.g. extraction of volatiles such as water for fuel H2/O2, drinking water, and Oxygen). In particular, a mining rover would be applied to mining resources, while sorting technology would be needed to remove (as opposed to collect) rocks above certain size. Size sorting for ISRU is extremely important since large rocks cannot be processed in the ISRU reactors nor cannot be used for 3D printing applications.

Non-NASA space related applications would include mining of resources for commercial gain. As such, companies such as Shackleton Energy, deep Space Industries, Planetary Resources, and even SpaceX would take advantage of this technology. Non-NASA/non-space applications could include robotic fabrication of temporary helicopter pads and airplane landing strips in desert environments such as Somalia for bringing humanitarian aid. Robots could be air-dropped ahead of the resupply airplanes or helicopters to construct needed landing zones. More »