Inflatable Lunar Habitat

The project “Inflatable Lunar Habitat” is develop by a group of students, master's degree in architecture, from Germany and is a part of this year's edition of IGLUNA, supported by Swiss Space Center.

The idea of ​​the project is to be created an easily portable laboratory for conducting scientific experiments in extreme weather conditions, here on Earth. But at the same time, the project is designed so that in the future this type of construction will be used to be build a habitat villige located in lava tubes on the moon or even on Mars.

The habitat is designed as an inflatable structure with an aerodynamic shape that is easy and fast to transport, carry out an assembly, it is also designed to be on a temporary basis and generate the least possible impact on the environment at the time of the investigation. For being inflatable is more vulnerable from the outside and the inside as well, because of that it is necessary to ensure the habitat subsystems such as the skin development and connections, the floor connections, the airlock and the climate control.

The structure is arranged of several different in type and function layers. Starting from inside with inflatable transparent skin of ETFE-foil, serving to provide a safe and sterile place for the experiments, followed by a support system of two layers of  crossing inflatable tubes,  and ending with another layer of ETFE- foil serving to protect the support structure from external mechanical impacts. And at the top, the entire prototype is protected from wind, rain and sun by a final layer. The whole inflatable structure is firmly attached to a steel frame, which in turn is attached to the ground. Inside the steel frame is the floor, which is made of aluminum honeycomb panels, which provide the necessary stability, flat surface and protection against slipping.

Due to the impossibility of the actual build of the prototype during this year's field campaign, due to the global pandemic, we included in the project and developed our vision for the lunar village, using as a modular unit for its design, the prototype of the  habitat constructed for the Earth.

Although this year the project remained at the level of technical drawings and 3D computer model, next year with the help of our current sponsors and hopefully new ones, as well as with the support of the Swiss Space Center we expect to build a real prototype of inflatable lunar habitat and to test it on Mount Pilatus in Switzerland during the field campaign of IGLUNA 2021.