Team Red has a mission!
After two days of team-building and lectures on the fundamentals of space station design, we’ve been given our mission:
Survey and formulate a comprehensive study of a permanently inhabited platform on the Lunar surface.
The proposed concept shall primarily enable human and robotic exploration of the Lunar South Pole region (minimal -75° latitude). Hence it shall provide an infrastructure to facilitate a crew of at least two astronauts, to offer landing and launch capability for logistics, as well as to conduct scientific operations. For cost effectiveness and maximal autonomy, ISRU shall be integrated in the concept as much as possible. In addition to that, the station may be used for technology demonstrations for further Earth independent deep space missions.
It may look technical, but there’s lots of exciting stuff there! We have to design a mission to the lunar South Pole – and come up with a plan to put the first human footprints on the Moon since 1972.
We’ll have to figure out a way to get there, find out how to survive on the lunar surface for months at a time, and how to get our crew back safely- it’s a big challenge!
You may be wondering what ISRU is, by the by. Like so many aspects of space travel, it’s a boring acronym for something really exciting. ISRU is In-Situ Resource Utilization — it means we’ll be designing our mission to use materials on the moon itself to build structures, habitats and whatever else we can design.
There’s lot of challenges to meet, so stay tuned to see how Team Read plans to shoot for the moon.
Space Station Design Workshop: Team Red 