A Long-Term Lunar Infrastructure Hub Named After the Object That Created the Moon

Getting back to the Moon is the primary goal of NASA’s Artemis program, but what do we do once we get there? That is the challenge tackled by a group of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who wrote a proposal for a lunar infrastructure module they call the Trans-lunar Hub for Exploration, ISRU, and Advancement – or THEIA, after the proposed object that crashed into the Earth that created the Moon as we know it today. Their submission was part of the NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage project, where teams from various academic institutions submitted papers focusing on the theme of Sustained Lunar Evolution for 2024.

To be clear, THEIA is not meant to serve as the central hub of NASA’s lunar exploration activities. The responsibility would still go to the Artemis base the agency has been working on. It is meant to serve as a hub for four main things that the team believes every long-term lunar mission will need: power, communications, transportation, and In-situ resource utilization (ISRU). 

The project’s mission requirements include providing local positioning, communications, and power to an area surrounding the lunar south pole. Various organizations are developing several pieces of infrastructure to do so.

First would be the delivery method to get there—like much of the overall Artemis project, THEIA would rely on delivery from a SpaceX Starship. The team calculated the initial launch requirements to get a basic setup up and running to be around 73 tons, well below the threshold of 100 tons the rocket is expected to be able to carry to the lunar surface.

That first set of equipment would include two other vital pieces of infrastructure – some LUNARSABER poles and robots to set them up. We previously did an entire article on the LUNARSABER project from Honeybee Robotics. Still, as a succinct overview, it is an extendable tower with solar panels along its sides to collect energy. Then, it uses a series of transmitters and receivers at its top to broadcast both power and communication signals. They can also bounce signals between two towers, creating a basic mesh network on the lunar surface.

A LUNARSABER is essential for supplying power and communications, but the UIUC team needs robotic help to deploy it. They suggest using several robotic rovers, including a multilimbed one designed on NASA’s Athlete prototype and a more traditional lunar rover based around the current Lunar Terrain Vehicle contract NASA has outstanding, with several companies still vying to provide the final design.

Other essential infrastructure pieces include ground antennas to transmit data and communications back to the Lunar Gateway and habitats that would allow both scientific experiments to operate and, eventually, crew to live. An essential additional part of THEIA’s design philosophy is that there should be space for experiments to operate inside a semi-controlled environment.

That would still be a long time from now, with original missions to launch THEIA not planned until 2035 and crewed missions to follow years later. However, THEIA was initially drawn up by a group of undergraduates, who presented a technical paper in response to the NASA RASC-AL proposal. It was one of many such proposals that resulted in groups from Virginia Polytechnic, the University of Maryland, and South Dakota University winning prizes. We’ll look at some of the other projects submitted by teams shortly, but congratulations to the UIUC team, who made it through the competition as a finalist, for the effort they put into theirs.

Learn More:
Bojinov et al – THEIA
UT – A Tower On The Moon Could Provide Astronauts With Light, Power, and Guidance
UT – NASA has Plans for More Cargo Deliveries to the Moon
UT – NASA Focuses in on Artemis III Landing Sites.

Lead Image:
THEIA Concept of Operations.
Credit – Bonjinov et al