EXPLORATION ARCHITECTURE CORPORATION — National Aeronautics and Space Administration STTR Phase I: T7

Description

Building lunar infrastructure requires moving regolith in unprecedented quantities both to produce level areas,nbsp;cutting in some areas, filling in others, for the infrastructurersquo;s construction, It also requires excavation to provide regolith feedstock for beneficiation and in situ manufacturing of the materials from which much of the infrastructure is to be built.Regolith handling characteristics and load bearing capability are not well understood. While some data are available from the Apollo program, none of the landings took place at the Lunar Base locations currently being considered near the lunar south pole. The regolith recovered from lunar equatorial highland regions is significantly different than that recovered from equatorial mare. Thus, data reliably defining regolith chemical composition and size characteristics at the expected Lunar Base sites are important for planning for regolithrsquo;s use as an in-situ resource.While Civil Engineering (CE) and construction use soils data derived from well-established instruments and practices, as well as long experience doing so on Earth, lunar in situ cut and fill operations remain at low Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). To date, very little data defining lunar regolith characteristics for CE and construction use in designing bulk regolith infrastructure has been developed.Our SurveyorBot concept is an innovative pathfinder for equipment that can characterize regolith handling difficulty and load bearing capability in situ at the lunar south pole. We combine a regolith cone penetrometer with seismic instrumentation to measure both regolith resistance to penetration and the regolithrsquo;s subsurface characteristics, critical items in site leveling. Our Plate Load Tester measures soil settlement due to imposed load increments, which will provide data on in-situ density and compactability. These instruments will allow us to begin to define regolith characteristics important to construction.nbsp;