ICON’s Project Olympus:
Lunar Landing Pad Concept Design
In Project Olympus, ICON and SEArch+ have developed design schematics for critical surface infrastructure necessary for a permanent lunar base. In 2020, ICON employed SEArch+ to develop design schematics for mission-critical surface construction elements for a lunar settlement; the design process was informed by discussions with key ICON engineers and NASA collaborators. The exchange not only ensured the constructibility of designs according to hardware and material processing limitations, but also enabled the architectural process to influence and shape hardware requirements as they were being defined.
The design and construction of lunar landing and launch pads ranks as a high-priority element of strategic infrastructure to be constructed on the surface of the Moon. To develop civil infrastructure on the Moon and eventually Mars, repeated visits to the same location will be necessary. Landing pads on the Moon would prevent regolith dust from sandblasting other infrastructure at 3 km/s, which would spread over the surface of the Moon and even enter lunar orbit. A landing pad provides a stable zone for a lander’s touchdown and would deflect exhaust plumes without excavating a hole under the lander. The Artemis missions will require increased capability over previous Apollo missions for accurate descent and landing systems with greater abilities to detect and avoid hazards. Autonomous space landings and precision landing to a prescribed target on the Moon will present additional challenges unmet in previous spaceflight missions—and the construction of landing pads from in situ resources will mitigate risks posed by frequent and repeated landings to locations close to a lunar outpost.
The landing pad study expanded on prior research differentiating the touchdown or center zone of the landing pad from the immediate area surrounding it, described as a secondary zone. Four main components for a landing pad were introduced including: multi-material concentric rings for the central landing surface, a blast wall, a support berm, and a dust trench. Within the study, multiple construction options were considered including: a continuous sintering method, paving options which include a solid paving surface, the creation of interlocking paver elements, and a layer of 3D-printed gravel aggregate.
Two design directions, titled the “sunflower vault” and the “eyelashes” directions, were down-selected at the conclusion of an iterative concept phase. The sunflower vault uses a continuous printed circular wall to contain the ejecta, offering different rebound angles according to the different sizing of the regolith particles: the biggest ejecta will fly on a lower angle but at supersonic speed while the lighter, slower ejecta will fly at an higher angle.
The Associate design team comprised of Melodie Yashar, Michael Morris, as well as Rebeccah Pailes Friedman of SEArch+. Collaborators with SEArch+ included: Waleed Elshanshoury, Mahsa Esfandabadi, David Gomez, Alexander Guzeev, Vittorio Netti, and Albert Rajkumar.
I would like to thank Jason Ballard, Evan Jensen, and Michael McDaniel of ICON for their support and guidance of this research, and for enabling work that will shape and influence the future of Lunar habitation for years to come. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Raymond Clinton, Mike Fiske, and Dr. Jennifer Edmunson for their support of SEArch+ throughout the MMPACT project and in earlier collaboration phases as well.