NASA Bradley University hope to make 3-D printed habitats on Mars and Earth

Should astronauts one day land on Mars, they may open the ship’s hatch and see more than miles of red dirt under a dusty sky. There may be a dome or an arch standing before them, or even a human-sized doughnut.

It won’t be an alien concoction but a place for them to live, built autonomously through 3-D printing.

That’s the idea behind the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge, a competition organized by NASA and open to anyone, in partnership with Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and several company sponsors.

“A competition brings people that are outside of our area of expertise to the table,” said Monsi Roman, program manager for NASA Centennial Challenges. “It allows us to look at a combination of solutions instead of one solution from just one area, like aerospace.”

The competition entered its third phase in early November, and NASA and Bradley are hoping to make 3-D printed habitats a reality soon — both on Mars and here on Earth.

The goal is to figure out how to make habitats from material on the red planet and, ideally, from recyclable items the astronauts bring with them. The arch, dome and doughnut were all concepts used in the design phase of the competition.

The most plentiful material on the planet, of course, is the iconic red regolith, or Martian soil. Recyclables could be anything, like the plastic packaging of the astronauts’ food, according to Roman.

Due to its thin atmosphere and desolate surface, Mars is uninhabitable for humans as it is. The competition aims to solve this by finding the habitat technology that best utilizes the materials there to support human life.

“A mission to Mars is going to test humans in many ways,” she said. “One of the best ways is by challenging us to be the ultimate recyclers. We have to be really good about using everything that comes with us.”

Competitors aren’t required to use recyclable material in their 3-D printed habitats, but those who do would be thinking ahead. NASA will have to meticulously plan out everything astronauts carry with them.

“You don’t have the luxury to be able to throw anything away,” Roman said. “There should be no trash on Mars.”

The dual emphasis on autonomous construction and use of indigenous materials could have enormous implications for construction on Earth too, according to Lex Akers, dean of the Caterpillar College of Engineering and Technology at Bradley.

“I’m a big believer in exploration of outer space, and hopefully this competition is just one step in launching us out there,” he said. “But what’s nice is it reflects back to great things on Earth.”

Earthly implications

One of the corporate sponsors of the competition is Brick & Mortar Ventures. Curtis Rodgers, principal vice president of the investment firm, said the company is interested in new technologies for improving construction on Earth.

“Construction hasn't been stale, but it has been experiencing solution scarcity,” Rodgers said. “We are at a point where technology is advancing fast enough to boost construction, and 3-D printing is one of those technologies.”

“We can consider solutions in all areas of construction with this technology,” he said.

Akers is particularly excited by the competition’s implications for housing.

“I’ve seen some beautiful drawings and concepts for 3-D printed homes that can be made artistically in ways that you could never do with our standard building techniques right now,” Akers said. “Everybody on the block could have a custom-designed home without any more cost than the standard home because you can customize these things so easily — just change the program.”

“Any time you get a chance to transform a trillion-dollar business, that’s an exciting thing to do,” he said.

Areas that are underdeveloped or hit by natural disasters could be the biggest beneficiaries of this technology, according to Yasser Khodair, a civil engineering professor at Bradley.

“On Earth, the key thing I think about from this competition is autonomous construction,” Khodair said. “In the future, this is going to be the way to build, especially in places that are hard to reach.”

While there are still many problems for NASA to solve before a Mars trip, development of this technology for earthly purposes can begin sooner.

“What we’re hoping for with this kind of partnership with all these eclectic groups of people is that development will continue on their own for Earth applications,” Roman said. “We see this as planting the seeds for the technology we will need. When NASA is ready to go to Mars, we can go back to those groups that continued the development and pick the fruit.”

A multidisciplinary approach

NASA has been running public competitions like this since 2005, launching close to 20 challenges in that time. The goal with each one has been the same — engage people outside the aerospace community with NASA research and development, especially those who may not otherwise have a chance.

The 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge has already gone through two phases of competition, each offering big cash prizes. The newly announced Phase 3 will challenge teams to create habitats at one-third scale of the real deal, offering up to $200,000 to each of the top 10 teams — a $2 million total prize purse.

After teaming up for the second phase, NASA is partnering with Bradley University again for the third step. But like the previous stages, the third phase is not limited to college students.

“Our target audience is pretty much anybody that has the technical expertise,” Roman said.

“A lot of the people that actually are successful in our competitions are the ones that have a multidisciplinary approach to an answer,” Roman said. “Just because you know a lot about 3-D printing doesn’t mean that you will be winning this competition.”

The first phase was held in 2015 and was a $50,000 design competition for habitat concepts, without any actual 3-D printing. It allowed engagement with artists and architects, groups that are not always easily included in NASA engineering efforts, Roman said.

The second phase, completed in August 2017, focused on the printing of structural components and offered $250,000 to the first-place winner.

The third phase is being split into five levels to make NASA’s work more accessible to others. The first two levels will focus on information modeling, or virtual construction of habitats, and will only require computer software to participate.

The final three levels involve printing the scale model and pressure-testing it.

Competitors do not have to complete all five levels, which Akers hopes will draw more participation.

“We can touch many more people with the virtual construction stages,” Akers said.

It was difficult for high school teams to participate in the second phase because of the resources and massive printers required to complete construction, he added.

Participants pay for everything themselves. NASA funds the prize money while Bradley University and the industry sponsors oversee the challenge, but the building materials and printing costs are left to the competitors.

“If we go from a dreaming stage to building immediately, the competition would be doomed because people would not have the resources,” Roman said. “Doing it in steps eases the process into actually building a habitat.”

“The competition was meant to be a lean program from the beginning,” she added. “The collaboration with industry and academia is what makes this work.”

For Akers, partnering with NASA amplifies what Bradley’s engineering college is already doing.

“It’s transformational technology, and that’s what colleges in engineering pay attention to, work on, teach our students,” Akers said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to take something we are already quite good at and expose our students to these great industries that will be involved in it.”

But the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge is not just for civil engineers. Printing a functional habitat presents not just civil engineering obstacles, but also mechanical, electrical and environmental engineering challenges.

“It’s a true, full engineering challenge,” Akers said. “All the disciplines are involved in making sure this works.”

Khodair noted that students will be exposed to state-of-the-art innovations and see how those in their field and others develop solutions and execute them.

“The amount of knowledge and professional experience that we’ll gain from interacting with different people involved with this competition is huge,” he said.

Roman calls the competition “front-row seating” for the latest developments. “If we’re talking about being on Mars in the 2030s,” she said, “students at those universities are the ones that will be making this a reality.”

mkloub@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @LessIsMoh

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