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Washington: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to deploy specially designed 3D printers to build homes on Moon for which a company has also been given a contract.
NASA had earlier said it was testing the 3D printers to check if they can build homes on the lunar surface. It has now said the 3D printers could be sent to Moon as early as February 2024.
According to a report by The New York Times, the 3D printers will use concrete made out of rock chips and mineral fragments from the top layer of the Moon's cratered surface to build homes.
The houses thus built will be accessible to astronauts and civilians both, NASA said.
"We're at a pivotal moment, and in some ways it feels like a dream sequence. In other ways, it feels like it was inevitable that we would get here," Niki Werkheiser, NASA's director of technology maturation, told US English daily.
According to other reports, NASA has already given a $60 million contract to ICON for the purpose.
ICON is a pioneer in 3D printing technology, building house since 2018 using 3D printing technology. The ICON 3D printers can build houses and other properties in less than 48 hours.
It is now expected to put its all efforts to turn the long-term Solar colonisation plan into reality.
"To change the space exploration paradigm from there and back again to there to stay, we’re going to need robust, resilient, and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the Moon and other planetary bodies", ICON Co-founder and CEO, Jason Ballard, said.
NASA is testing ICON's 3D printers before they are sent to the Moon in February next year at its Marshall Space Flight Center to check if they can effectively handle the vacuum conditions and radiation levels of space.
This comes three years after NASA awarded a contract worth US $14.1 million to Nokia to deploy a 4G cellular network on the Moon.
NASA's plan of longer stay on the Moon is unveiled about half a century after its Apollo 17 Mission, when astronauts spent 75 hours on the lunar surface.
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