Igloos could be the structure of choice on Mars Tuesday, 20 October 2015

NASA has awarded a structure built from ice the winner of its competition to design a habitat for a future settlement on Mars.

The idea of the competition was to come up with a way to build a structure on Mars capable of supporting a crew of four for a year without having to transport heavy construction equipment and materials from Earth. The building would be done by robots from an unmanned mission beforehand with 3D printing identified as a preferred method of construction for the competition and materials expected to be sand or clay.

The Mars Ice House was designed by Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office drawing on the expertise of consultants from Pratt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Princeton University, and Parsons School of Design.

They decided the ready availability of subsurface ice offered both structural soundness and translucency. The external ice is surrounded by an ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) membrane which prevents the ice subliming into the atmosphere.

Within the external shell is an ‘outside’ area where the crew can walk about without the need for space suits and a smaller internal shell containing the rooms to be used by the crew. At the heart of this shell is the lander module which arrived to build the structure and contains communications and other facilities which can’t be manufactured simply on Mars.

A hydroponic plant system is used to convert the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into breathable oxygen within the habitat.

The competition was part of NASA’a Centennial Challenges program designed to directly engage the public in the process of advanced technology development. Teams were judged on architectural concept, design approach, habitability, innovation, functionality, Mars site selection and 3-D print constructability.

More than 150 entries were received for the competition with the winners receiving US$25,000.

“The creativity and depth of the designs we’ve seen have impressed us,” said Centennial Challenges Program Manager Monsi Roman.

“These teams were not only imaginative and artistic with their entries, but they also really took into account the life-dependent functionality our future space explorers will need in an off-Earth habitat.”