Dear Commons Community,

More than 50 years after astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission, the U.S. space agency is planning another lunar visit — only this time, it will reportedly be a permanent one.

According to The New York Times, NASA believes that by 2040, Americans will be living in houses on the moon. While some in the scientific community are skeptical that the feat is overly ambitious, NASA scientists insist the 2040 goal for lunar living is entirely attainable.

“We’re at a pivotal moment, and in some ways it feels like a dream sequence,” Niki Werkheiser, NASA’s director of technology maturation, told the Times. “In other ways, it feels like it was inevitable that we would get here.”

Werkheiser said NASA’s increasing openness to collaborate with academics and other leading experts in the field puts the goal that much closer in reach.

“We’ve got all the right people together at the right time with a common goal, which is why I think we’ll get there,” she explained. “Everybody is so ready to take this step together, so if we get our capabilities developed, there’s no reason it’s not possible.”

NASA has named its mission to return to the moon Artemis.

To make it happen, NASA will send a 3-D printer to the moon, to build housing structures using dust, rocks and mineral fragments found on the moon’s cratered surface to make a concrete-like material, according to CBS News.

Interestingly, while the noxious dust has long been considered a significant hindrance to life on the moon, NASA thinks it could also be the solution. According to the Times, 3-D printing the houses from the moon’s own surface materials would allow the dwellings to withstand the moon’s extreme temperature swings and toxic combination of micrometeorites and radiation.\

For the plan to materialize, NASA has laid out a schedule of key benchmarks for its mission, which has been named Artemis for the twin sister of Apollo. In November 2024, four human crew members will be rocketed up to orbit the moon. One year following that trip, NASA plans to land humans on the moon for a second time in history.

For the construction side of the endeavor, NASA has partnered with ICON, a Texas-based construction technology company. After an initial round of funding from NASA in 2020, ICON announced in 2022 that it had secured an additional $60 million for a construction system that could be used in outer space.

Architects from the Bjarke Ingels Group and SEArch+ have also been tapped to dream up designs and concepts for the lunar homes.

Another significant challenge for the project is making sure all of the necessary construction materials and tools are in place on the moon, per CBS News, particularly as rockets need to travel light.

Patrick Suermann, interim dean of the School of Architecture at Texas A&M University, which is working closely with NASA to develop a robot-operated space construction system, said transporting supplies from earth to the moon is “unsustainable.”

“And there’s no Home Depot up there. So you either have to know how to use what’s up there or send everything you need,” he told the Times.

Before anything is shipped to the moon, however, NASA will rigorously test the tools and materials down here on earth, including the 3-D printer and the lunar concrete.

“The first thing that needs to happen is a proof of concept. Can we actually manipulate the soil on the lunar surface into a construction material?” Jennifer Edmunson, lead geologist for the project at Marshall Space Flight Center, told the Times.

“We need to start this development now if we’re going to realize habitats on the moon by the 2040 time frame,” she added.

As for what will go inside the lunar dwellings, NASA is working on that, too. The agency is partnering with several private companies and universities to develop prototypes for space furniture and interior design elements, including fixtures and tiles.

Beam me up, Scotty!

Tony