Christine Thropp
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched an in-space manufacturing program that seeks to develop materials for large space and lunar structures and has announced a Feb. 26 webinar for interested proposers.
The Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient Design program is aimed at enabling construction on orbit and on the lunar surface through new foundational materials, processes and designs in response to payload size limitations, DARPA said Friday.
Deployment of large-scale, dynamic space systems is currently hampered by mass and volume limits on the payloads sent to orbit by modern rockets.
Bill Carter, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office, said the agency initiated NOM4D to also make large structures more weight efficient and more precise.
According to DARPA, proposers must present mass-efficient system designs that are capable of being constructed off-earth and are resilient to space and lunar environments.
NOM4D program has three 18-month phases, with the first phase aimed at providing proof of concept for materials and designs and the second focused on reducing risks and maturing technologies. The third phase seeks to enable integration of infrared reflective structures into segmented long-wave IR telescope for enhanced precision.
"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,†said Carter.
