Establishing habitats on the Moon or Mars comes with a unique challenge: shielding inhabitants from harmful radiation. The prevailing solution in space exploration is to build underground. But before constructing living quarters, laboratories, or even vegetable gardens, designers need to map subterranean lava tubes. How to create accurate maps of these irregular and rugged environments?
That’s precisely the challenge tackled by a team of students led by TU Delft researcher Dr Henriette Bier (Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment). Last November, the group ventured into a cave with a bifurcated structure in Sicily to test their mapping approach. The expedition was sponsored ESA, TU Delft Moonshot and Robotics Institute, and Erasmus+ – the European programme for education, youth, training and spots .
The mapping was carried out in two stages. First, the students used artificial lighting to capture high-resolution photographs of the cave’s entire surface with smartphones. Next, they deployed a robot dog equipped with a lidar sensor in place of its head. Agile and precise, the robotic explorer navigated the rocky terrain to scan every crevice of the cave and generate a 3D point cloud of its interior.
Back in Delft, the team is now meticulously overlaying the photographs onto the 3D point cloud to produce a detailed spatial rendering of the cave. This technology could serve as a blueprint for designing and building extraterrestrial habitats in lava tubes.
Curious to see how it works? Check out this short video:
0:02 / 1:41 Moonshot+ TU Delft lava tube mission in Sicily 2024
- For more information on the Moonshot+ project on Lunar Architecture and Infrastructure, check their website.
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