UTECFBSM

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

Awards & Nominations

UTECFBSM has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Sustainable designs for a sustainable Mars habitat

High-Level Project Summary

Due to the current conditions on Earth, sustainable design is becoming more relevant and essential. Designing in an intelligent way, solving multiple problems, saving material in order to lead a greener life and avoiding pollution are the main objectives that our team had in mind to approach this challenge. On Mars it must be the same way, especially with the shortage of resources when starting. We focus on designing modular and multipurpose equipment as well as a spare wheel for our Rover, with the least amount of material possible. These approaches can also be used to solve problems of lack of equipment, tools, etc. in other environments.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/nabesube/utecfbspacemakers

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1o3CAe5bb_0qLylHRYjzmQ_XQ-vrmtr5YCzm1L7E5m24/edit?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

Along this Hackathon we developed a varied set of tools and furniture, as well as a spare rover wheel, which represent some of the essential features needed for this one year mission on Mars. Our main objectives were to design useful devices, preferentially using materials which can be produced in the Martian atmosphere and adequating them to fit the printers limitations. The most used material was plastic, as it can be easily produced with resources on the planet, while metal was just used for cases when strength and resistance was needed, as is the case of the rover wheel. In this particular design, the “tire” was made of 32 plastic modules assembled and the hub and spokes were made of metal, also in a modular design of 10 pieces to be properly printed and then assembled. The products were designed considering the measurements and materials available for the mentioned printers, as well as habitat and mission data. The challenge mentioned that there were 3 printers, 1 of metal: 150mm x 100mm x 100mm, resolution of 0.1mm, another of plastic: 310mm x 130mm x 140mm, resolution of 0.1mm, and one of concrete, for giant objects. It was also mentioned that any object to be used inside the habitat should fit in the airlock and decontamination area of 2m x 2m x 2m. 25mm resolution. For the 3D modeling and STL files, we used an online platform OnShape, Autodesk Inventor and Fusion 360. For the presentation, we used Google Slides and Slidesgo. Finally, GitHub was used as a repository to upload the open source project. In this repository there are editable files to make modifications if necessary. The designs were thought to be multipurpose, modular, solving different problems and easy to print. Design thinking was used to consider solving different needs of the habitant with fewer elements.

Space Agency Data

For the design, we made use of data regarding the missions, design guidelines, existing models, mainly of the wheel and habitat characteristics. Information provided in the resources section of the challenge. The data to be used were obtained from the following addresses:

Design Guidelines.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001427/downloads/20200001427.pdf

ARC 3D Model Database:

https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models

NASA Chapea:

https://www.nasa.gov/chapea

Technical information on additive manufacturing:

https://www.nist.gov/additive-manufacturing

MARS DUNE ALHPA (CHAPEA)

https://www.iconbuild.com/technology/mars-dune-alpha

Hackathon Journey

It was a very interesting, exciting and educational experience. The process was very positive because we were able to work well as a team, knowing each other's weaknesses and talents, and there was always good communication. All this despite the fact that all the members were in different locations. We were inspired to choose the challenge because our careers are based on the correct design of equipment, machinery with a focus on innovation and problem solving and the thought of applying it to space issues sounded interesting. We thank the national and international organizations for the tools provided from data, coordination and communication to facilitate the realization of the project.