NASA Gives ICON $57 Million to Build a 3D Printer for Structures on the Moon

NASA Gives ICON $57 Million to Build a 3D Printer for Structures on the Moon

Austin, Texas-based 3D printing construction company ICON has gotten some pretty significant projects off the ground in recent years, from a 50-home development in Mexico to a 100-home neighborhood in Texas. This week the company won a NASA contract that will help it get an even bigger project much further off the ground—all the way to the moon, in fact.

The $57.2 million contract is intended to help ICON develop technologies for building infrastructure on the moon, like landing pads, houses, and roads. The goal is for ICON to build these lunar structures using local material—that is, moon houses built out of moon dust and moon rocks.

“To change the space exploration paradigm from ‘there and back again’ to ‘there to stay,’ we’re going to need robust, resilient, and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the moon and other planetary bodies,” said ICON co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard in a press release.

Doing anything in space is ultra-expensive because you have to bring the materials and tools you need up from Earth. Imagine loading rockets with bricks or cement mix for 100 houses and flying them to the moon. Not only would this be cost-prohibitive, it could very well be a waste of time and resources because those building materials wouldn’t hold up on the lunar surface the same way they do on Earth.

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https://singularityhub.com/2022/12/01/nasa-gave-icon-57-million-to-build-a-3d-printer-for-structures-on-the-moon/?amp=1