Development environment for a regolith melting process for a lunar flight demonstration mission
Luxembourg Space Resources Week
25.-27. März
Luxemburg
2024
Type: Konferenzbeitrag
Abstract
For future missions to the Moon, especially if they are crewed, and to support long-term stays, it would be helpful if infrastructure such as landing pads, roads or shelters were already in place. To create this infrastructure easily and cost-effectively, methods that can process lunar regolith without additional materials or heavy equipment are advantageous. One such process is mobile selective laser melting (M-SLM), developed by the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. and the TU Berlin, which requires only a small laser source (optical output power of 200 W, wavelength of 976 nm) to process the loose regolith. To realistically develop suitable process parameter settings and strategies, a development environment that replicates the lunar environmental conditions is required. Another challenge is the test evaluation, as many established evaluation methods such as tensile testing are not feasible with the samples that can be produced.
This contribution shows the experimental setup used to develop the M-SLM process and describes how it simulates lunar environmental conditions (vacuum, thermal conduction, dispersion of released gases, etc.). In addition, further optimization potentials of the experimental setup and aspects of the lunar environment that cannot be simulated are identified. Furthermore, the experimental procedure, the geometry of the produced samples and the applied analysis methods will be explained.