Orbital Construction: DARPA Pursues Plan for Robust Manufacturing in Space
New program to develop designs and materials for building large structures on orbit and moon
ARLINGTON, Va. (DARPA PR) — As commercial space companies increase the cadence of successful rocket launches, access to space is becoming more routine for both government and commercial interests. But even with regular launches, modern rockets impose mass and volume limits on the payloads they deliver to orbit. This size constraint hinders developing and deploying large-scale, dynamic space systems that can adapt to changes in their environment or mission.
To address this problem, DARPA today announced its Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program. The effort, pronounced “NOMAD,” seeks to pioneer technologies for adaptive, off-earth manufacturing to produce large space and lunar structures. A Proposers Day webinar for interested proposers is schedule for February 26, 2021.
“NOM4D’s vision is to develop foundational materials, processes, and designs needed to realize in-space manufacturing of large, precise, and resilient Defense Department systems,” said Bill Carter, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “We will explore the unique advantages afforded by on-orbit manufacturing using advanced materials ferried from Earth. As an example, once we eliminate the need to survive launch, large structures such as antennas and solar panels can be substantially more weight efficient, and potentially much more precise. We will also explore the unique features of in-situ resources obtained from the moon’s surface as they apply to future defense missions. Manufacturing off-earth maximizes mass efficiency and at the same time could serve to enhance stability, agility, and adaptability for a variety of space systems.”
The NOM4D program will pioneer new materials and manufacturing technologies for construction on orbit and on the lunar surface as well as explore new mass-efficient designs.
“People have been thinking about on-orbit manufacturing for some time, so we expect to demonstrate new materials and manufacturing technologies by the program’s end,” Carter said. “The lunar-surface focus area will be geared more towards trade studies and targeted demonstrations.”
Concerning mass-efficient designs, the vision is for completely new concepts that could only be manufactured in space.
“We’re looking for proposers to come up with system designs that are so mass-efficient that they can only be built off-earth, and with features that enable them to withstand maneuvers, eclipses, damage, and thermal cycles typical of space and lunar environments,” Carter said. “Given the constraints of ground test, launch and deployment, the traditional approach to designing space structures is not likely to result in dramatic improvements in mass efficiency. In order to take the next step, we’ve got to go about materials, manufacturing, and design in a completely new way.”
The program is divided into three 18-month phases that build towards the ability to create incredibly precise, mass efficient structures from feedstock. Each phase is driven by metrics derived from increasingly challenging exemplar problems. Phase I is considered the proof of concept for materials and designs that meet stringent structural efficiency targets using the exemplar problem of a 1-megawatt solar array.
Phase II focuses on risk reduction and technical maturation of the technology to meet structural targets, while maintaining high precision sufficient to meet the requirements of an exemplar 100m diameter RF reflector.
Phase III drives a substantial leap in precision to enable IR reflective structures suitable for use in a segmented long-wave infrared telescope. The exemplars are designed to drive metrics for each phase, and ground-based fabrication of sub-scale exemplar structures (as opposed to the full structures) will be fabricated as part of the program to validate advanced NOM4D material, manufacturing and design capabilities.
NOM4D assumes an established space ecosphere by 2030 comprising reliable logistics, facilities, and validation. This includes rapid, frequent launch with regularly scheduled lunar visits; mature robotic manipulation tools for building structures in space and routine on-orbit refueling of robotic servicing spacecraft (e.g. DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program technologies); and the availability of in-space, non-destructive evaluation methods for in-process monitoring of manufacturing and near real-time design adjustments.
For more information about the Proposers Day webinar, including registration details, visit: https://go.usa.gov/xAhQp. A Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicitation is anticipated to be available on beta.SAM.Gov in the coming weeks.
14 responses to “Orbital Construction: DARPA Pursues Plan for Robust Manufacturing in Space”
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The Green New Space Deal; Space Solar Power Satellite arrays manufactured in lunar factories as the solution to climate change.
I’ll get Biden right on it.
Heh.
The solution to CO2 emissions from the production of electricity was figured out in the 1960’s when the government first tried to address global warming and if it hadn’t been for environmentalists demonizing nuclear energy CO levels would be in the low 300 ppm today. The problem needing a solution has been transportation energy emissions, especially from ships, aircraft and automobiles. Shorten supply chains using Controlled Environment Agriculture and improved battery technology will be the solution to the transportation issue. SBSP would be nice to have, but if it gets any traction expect the environmentalists to demonize it over it’s microwave transmission of the energy. That is why its best use will be for space manufacturing and shipping the goods produced to Earth.
Chernobyl…Fukushima. “Nice to have” is not going stop climate change. Environmentalists will “demonize it”? Again, you don’t have a clue.
LOL, you really have not studied either one in detail have you? In the first it was just basic Russian carelessness, just like the carelessness that has impacted their naval nuclear power program. In the second it was running a plant long past its retirement date and keeping the spent fuel rods on site instead of shipping them to a waste storage facility. But the environmentalists have stopped the building of Yucca Mountain because they seem to believe its safer for the fuel rods to stay at the power plant than in a nice secure underground facility. And so CO has soared over 400 ppm as a result while “safe” wind turbines are wiping out the birds. .
LOL? Really? You are worthless.
Guess you haven’t studied the history of the issue as I stated since that is your only reply.
Great initiative and a decade or two overdue. Now, if DARPA was actually structured to lead these things through to practical applications, i.e. hand over to some civilian commercial development agency or something once the pilot and proof has been done.
Orbital Express was great, but actual applications have been slow to follow, and thats more of a rule rather than exception with most DARPA technology pushes. Great at seeding things, not so great at finding onramps for further development.
I love DARPA but their mandate is not to pay for high priced research and engineering projects to then be turned over to private industry to exploit for profit. Eventually, private industry gets the technology once the Defense Department gets first use.
Yeah, but they haven’t been too great with DoD onramps either with many high profile tech projects. The several robotics challenges they have run, OrbEx etc
Quite the contrary, I’d say. Both advanced robotics and autonomous vehicles are now firmly ensconced in the private sector with the military no longer being the main force behind either.
Actually, that is pretty much their mandate – as is NASA’s for that matter. Military “first use” doesn’t mean the military builds their own stuff. This isn’t China with much of industry being owned by the military. DARPA projects pay private sector contractors to do development. At some point, other DoD entities pay those contractors to build production versions.
Go DARPA, show NASA how its done!