Hephaestus Team

Piraeus | Outfitting a Mars Habitat: A 3D Print Challenge

Hephaestus: Outfitting a Mars Habitat

High-Level Project Summary

For the project, we made a list of important objects, out of which we designed the 3D parts for a new rover wheel, to replace the broken one, along with tools(handle and bits for some tools) for the repairment and planting. Also, we designed an ergonomic chair and a desk for furniture, in order for the astronaut to work. For the kitchen equipment we designed a cup, a fork and a knife, so that they can eat the food that the habitat has provided. The first and the former is important for the survival of the astronaut. The furniture is helpful for the preparation of food and provides the ability to do research work. Without the wheel, the obtainment of the materials would not be possible.

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LW-QNBFgzWBxa91qaSMhOX70QGnWimwZ?usp=sharing

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10sNBFO4AyS4RqR8pgBAfTtCBlymz01Fi/view?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

Our project is about the challenge “Outfitting a Mars habitat: A 3D print challenge”, in which we were given the objective to design tools, furniture and other important items in order to survive our one-year mission on Mars. First and foremost, our primary goal was to design the replacement wheel for the rover. This will allow us to travel around the area and collect more materials for the printers, which is very important in order to design all the other items and furniture. The wheel will have a closed outboard face intending to keep rocks and sand out. It also has an asymmetrical pattern that will leave it in the sand, so that we can know the direction that the rover is going.

The next important step was to make tools, where all of them share a handle (from the plastic printer) and the rest will be created separately from our metal printer. This is important in order to repair, not only our rover wheel, but anything else that needs repair tools. The handle will also be used for the plant tools (shovel, scissors to promote growth and they will also double as normal scissors).

For furniture, we created an ergonomic design for our chair, inspired by the formula seat and zero gravity chairs, and will be made out of concrete. This will provide comfort for the astronaut and will help him concentrate easily on his work. A work desk was created, which doubles as a counter to eat and make food, so that the astronaut can work and have a table to keep stuff on. For the workspace, we envisioned a battery powered desk lamp, with lights from the landing craft, which is important for the nighttime in mars. For the bed, we decided that it would be more comfortable for our astronaut to create a hammock bed from the parachute of the landing craft.

Since it is important to take into consideration the psychological consequences that space travel will have on our astronaut, we decided that he could have plant pots and trays, to put plants, either from earth or from mars, because plants help to overcome stress and feel calm, based on research (Bratislav, 2018).

Additionally, for the entertainment of the astronaut, we thought that it will be important to have some logic games, like a Rubik’s cube and unlock-interlock puzzles. These are helpful to increase the logic skill of the person and boost their brain activity (including a space buddy -small octopus-).

The physical activity of the astronaut was also taken into consideration, because it is important to exercise daily in order to mitigate the effects of the different gravity on their muscles. For that reason, we created the designs for parallel bars and weights.

Finally, additional objects include cleaning equipment, like a broom and a dustpan, in order to keep the space clean from the plant soil and the dirt from Mars. The kitchen equipment is also important in order to eat the food provided by the habitat (this will include a 3D printed fork, spoon, knife, bowl and a bottle). For the female hygiene products, we found the solution of a 3D printed pad frame (with cloth provided by the parachute)(McDonald et al., 2018).

The tools we used for the development of the project were: Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, Cura, Canva.

Space Agency Data

During the design phase of the replacement wheel for the mars rover that the astronaut has to repair in order to complete his mission, we used pictures and STL files provided by the “ARC 3D Models Database” from NASA. The basic dimensions were given in the Imperial system, but for simplicity purposes we converted them to the Metric system.

M2020_WHEEL_DESKTOP_MODEL-5inch

Hackathon Journey

The Space Apps experience was an interesting challenge and our team was excited to be a part of it. Thanks to this challenge, we were able to learn to collaborate with new people and improve our communication skills, because in order to solve this challenge we had to find new ideas through discussion with all of our members. Since we had to solve the challenge in such a small amount of time, we worked on our time management skill and broke the challenge down into smaller parts, so that we could efficiently reach the deadline. For some of the parts of the challenge, research was needed to further understand some topics, which helped us learn to research successfully and find the correct information. The reason our team chose this challenge was because of our passion for 3D printing, a skill which we wanted to expand our knowledge on, along with our ability to come up with new ideas and design in such a short amount of time. Our approach to developing this challenge was to read carefully the description and brainstorm ideas, after which, we put those ideas on a list and chose the most important ones to start designing them. The biggest challenge that occurred was that we could not find ways to combine products and find the best design for space saving furniture, a problem which we solved by designing some of the suggestions until we found the one that we thought would work the best (for example the multitool). We would like to thank the mentors, which helped us through any difficulty.