Shackleton Crater Habitat

Habitat / Robotic Bay / Launching Pad

M2M: Moon to Mars

Regardless of the rationales for humans to live beyond the Earth’s terrestrial shores, it is certain that man will continue to evolve alongside of intelligent machines. As with the technological advances of the last century that put a man in our atmosphere and on the Moon, the monumental challenges and innovations to overcome and optimize interdependent life between humans and machines are immeasurable. As architects, by humanizing the progressive technology necessary to assure human success in outer space, we will purposefully assuage many deep-seated fears of future life with AI towards positive outcomes necessary to ultimately affect collective life and wellbeing life on Earth.

Working collaborate with NASA’s Artemis Program, our team focused on human centered designs for self-sustaining habitat base as launching point for deep space missions. The habitat will be built in association with other required infrastructural element that includes NASA’s Gateway and Lunar landing pads that will one day form a permanent settlement. Lunar base will be the gateway to establishing human presence on Mars and deep space exploration. Our project expands upon existing and projected NASA research, mission protocols, and directives regarding habitat size, layouts, means and methods to sustain human life. The means of production will operate RLSO (Robotic Lunar Surface Operations) mission with ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization). Our goal is to extract LLOX (Lunar-sourced Liquid Oxygen) producing lunar base that would be later built by robots before human crews arrive. By maximizing opportunities for machine autonomy, remotely controlled robots will be sent along with prefabricated modules to construct robotic bay and habitat. Primary human factors include exposure and protection from radiation and the effects of living in 1/6th gravity and the 0 atmosphere vacuum. The architectural drivers for the design’s spaces will based on available sunlight, exposure and protection from radiation, and the structures that resist both internal pressurization and ballistic protect against external meteor strikes and dust plumes.

Site Condition

Shackleton Crater

Studies have shown that crater’s rim receive sunlight 90 percent of the time which is the ideal location to capture thermal energy to operate solar powered machines.

Crater Rim Offset Region

The distance of the region is around 2 - 3 km. Measurement is associated with travel distance of lunar rovers that NASA has developed. By placing habitat within this region, it allows us to be decently close to ice reserve down in the center of the crater.

Robotic Bay Concept

Robotic Bay Program Organizational Logics

Robotic Bay Planning

Landing Pad Concept

Overview of Launching Pad

Launching Pad Location

Construction Components

Supersonic Ejecta

Regolith Collection

Construction Components

Airlock Concept

Expandable Airlock Components

Oxygen Generating System

Airlock Sequence

Habitat Concept

Prioritize Psychological Well-Being

The desolate and lifeless environment will be detrimental to the psychological health of astronauts on habitat. We aim to mitigate this through integrating green & social spaces in habitat.

Habitat Program Strategy

Separate spaces provide for individual control over the amount of contact with others. Providing varieties of social programs centered to link between private and public will elevate crews’ quality of life in extraterrestrial field.

Program Configuration Strategy

Large diameter vertically oriented modules are best suited for triangular configuration. Triangular configuration can minimize the area for site surface preparation. Later, it was reshaped into diagonal composition which allows easier access for robots and maintenance.

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Importance of Sleep Disruption

Sleep disruption has high impact issue on humans. Closed loop environments are inherently noisy due to life support machinery and limited structure design. Programs in need of isolation are placed at upper level.

Human Interaction with Vegetation

Psychological & physiological stress levels decrease significantly with vegetation. Presence of plants helps improve memory span by 20 percent and increase concentration. Greenhouses are directly connected to main vestibule for hygiene purposes.