If you’re going to spend upwards of 300 days to fly to Mars, you want to have a nice crib to kick back in once you get there! That’s exactly what one team of French researchers is attempting to provide with a bubble-shaped habitat that can be 3D printed on the Red Planet.
According to Space.com and Discovery News, the design is known as the Sfero Bubble House and it was designed by a group of scientists or engineers brought together under the umbrella of additive manufacturing company, Fabulous. It was made for NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, but didn’t make the cut, possibly because the design was not submitted in time.
The Sfero house would include both an internal and an external dome, with a “protective pocket of water” between the two, architecture publication Dezeen explained. A lone corridor would be on the planet’s surface, allowing access into the two-tiered interior. The upper workstations and the lower sleeping quarters would being connected by a spiral staircase, the website added.
Construction would begin with the placement of a long central pole that would drill into the ground and extend a pair of robotic arms, one of which would collect and sort material from the surface while the other would use the material to 3D print the internal and external domes.
Made completely of Martian materials
The Sfero Bubble House would be manufactured completely out of Martian soil, and reports indicate that the habitat itself would be partially buried beneath the surface so that just the top floor is on the ground. It would be spherical in shape in order to provide adequate resistance to the low atmospheric density of Mars, and would also contain an indoor garden.
Ideally, the habitat would be built in Gale crater, which is known to be home to a large amount of iron deposits. The design would use the iron oxide as raw materials for the 3D printing process, fusing together powdered iron particles using lasers, and the arms would search for permafrost to melt down for the water pocket, which would protect astronauts from radiation.
“With Sfero, we are pushing the idea that a habitat should adapt itself to its surroundings, to the native and available resources,” said Fabulous founder Arnault Coulet, according to 3Ders.org. “The value our project is to show that there is a French expertise in space research and in 3D printing. We want to show that these techniques are also achievable for fabrication emergency shelters [on Earth].”
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Feature Image: Fabulous
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