The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen 3D-printing technology company ICON among fourteen partners to build a framework for lunar architecture. The LunA-10 Lunar Architecture Study will run for seven months with the aim to “create a framework for interoperable commercial lunar architecture that will help to guide lunar research and investment over the next ten years.” As longtime partners, BIG and ICON have collaborated on projects both on Earth and in space. BIG worked with ICON to design Project Olympus, a lunar habitat intended to be built from lunar regolith using ICON’s 3D-printing technology. The habitat is designed to accommodate four astronauts for a period of up to a month at a time. BIG and ICON also collaborated on Mars Dune Alpha, a structure simulating life on Mars to facilitate future long-duration, explorative science missions, which is now housed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.
