Robots build launch pads on Mars to explore the Galaxy

Martian is a great plane movie. Long enough to pass the time for at least half a Vegas flight. We know the story, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive…

However, humans have never built another structure on another planet. So far, everything hurled beyond our atmosphere and into the great beyond was constructed on Earth, made by human hands or human-built machines using resources from sweet mother Terra herself. If we want to venture forth into the cosmos like Watney, and say, launch a return rocket home, it’d be nice to have a launch pad in place on the alien planet. Instead of hauling a launch pad there, why not make a machine that can use local materials to build one?

Over the course of several months, a remotely-controlled robot (above) from the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration (PISCES) did just that. And now, thanks to Project Manager Rodrigo Romo (and HoneyBee Robotics of NYC) we can watch that construction in all its impressive, tedious glory:

The project is a first-of-its-kind and aims to robotically build a vertical take-off and landing pad using basalt found on the Big Island. The goal is to successfully build a landing pad on Earth using local materials, so that it can be done in space.

Landing pads will be crucial in future space missions. Spacecrafts can cause high velocity dust storms during take-off and landing, blasting planetary dust in all directions. These jet-propelled sandblasts could cause significant damage to neighboring structures and space equipment. To mitigate this problem, landing pads offer a flat, stable surface to prevent such damages.

This was part of NASA’s larger Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement (ACME) project, which wants to use found materials on alien worlds, builder robots like this one, and 3D printing, to build structures without needing to bring all the parts from Earth. So if a robot can flatten and smooth a tract of Hawaii into a serviceable landing pad on Earth, then cover it in durable interlocking tiles, it’s likely a robot on Mars or elsewhere could do the same for a future mission. Good news for space exploration, even better news for getting space explorers home. Run the video tape:

One last point, if robots can build structures on Mars imagine what they could do with Manhattan real estate?