Novel Construction of Lunar Landing Pad Reinforcement Structures

Early Apollo-era landings encountered a variety of hazards including obstruction of visibility, high-velocity ejecta, and plume cratering. These problems resulted in damage to the lander and nearby equipment. Going forward, to safely conduct repeated landing and launch sequences on the lunar surface, landing pad designs will be required to mitigate plume effects, redirect and/or capture exhaust flow, and dissipate the kinetic energy of debris and ejecta. Prior efforts by the Linc-Lunar PAD team resulted in a successful subscale 610 cm diameter design that was 3-D printed and underwent hot fire testing with a M-class motor hot-fire test. However, this design relied heavily on overhang features that required water soluble internal supports that would not be feasible for lunar printing. During Phase 1 of this NASA STTR, the Linc team evaluated various conceptual designs and construction approaches for printing on the lunar surface. Based on prior work and anticipated infrastructure on the moon, a block like approach was selected where individual pieces could be assembled in the diameter required. Preliminary analysis of the conceptual design approaches combined structural integrity with plume mitigation. Based on the design features evaluated, key features were identified that were used to establish a preliminary block design. The Phase II efforts will advance the preliminary block design resulting from the Phase I efforts into a prototype that will be subjected to verification tests for evaluation of functionality. As a deliverable on the Phase II efforts, a 6 m diameter subscale landing pad will be delivered to the NASA-MSFC facility for their evaluation for hot fire testing evaluation in a vacuum environment. The Phase II effort will advance the technology from a TRL of 1 in Phase I to a TRL of 3. Early Apollo-era landings encountered hazards including obstruction of visibility, high-velocity ejecta, and plume cratering. These problems resulted in damage to the lander and nearby equipment. To safely conduct repeated landing/launch sequences on the lunar surface, landing pad designs are required to mitigate plume effects, redirect and/or capture exhaust flow, and dissipate the kinetic energy of debris and ejecta.   In Phase 1, the Linc team evaluated various conceptual designs and construction approaches. Based on prior work and anticipated infrastructure on the moon, a block like approach was selected where individual pieces could be assembled in the diameter required. In Phase II, Linc will further develop and refine block designs, develop the process for locking the blocks together, and develop and test a prototype landing pad. The novel construction approaches will enable the development of resilient landing pad structures that provide protection from lander plume effects.   Design Maturation – conduct congruent model validation and maturation of the full-sized lunar blocks to ensure the structural integrity of the block designs, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with added Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis to include internal flow pressure and forces. Design Validation - fabricate 1/20th subscale design blocks to validate structural integrity through mechanical testing, cold flow simulations, lab-based flow testing and hot-fire testing at atmospheric conditions. Deliverables - deliver 1/20th subscale blocks to form a 6 m diameter landing pad to the NASA-MSFC for hot fire testing evaluation. Estimated number of subscale blocks is 121.

The goal of landing and launch pads is to enable repeated land and launch cycles without worrying about damaging surrounding equipment and personnel due to high-speed ejecta. The safety of Human Landing System (HLS) and Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) landers also benefit from this service as the stagnation region of an unimpeded lander plume is likely to create a crater and deflect ejecta back towards the lander. Potential non-NASA applications include lunar landing pads for commercial space and DoD customers and terrestrial landing pads for DoD and emergency relief efforts. Lunar landing pads can support Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance in space for DoD. Terrestrial landing pads can be used for rapid transportation of supplies to remote areas and for reducing dust from rotary wing landings.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.