Patent — available for licensing
Lunar Landing Pads
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Lunar landing and launch pads represent critical infrastructure for enabling a sustained presence on the Moon or other planetary bodies. Such a Moon presence would require repeated lunar landings and takeoffs, preferably near an outpost or habitat. In the absence of takeoff and landing pads, such vehicles could project lunar regolith at high velocities, “sandblasting” the surrounding infrastructure and causing damage. Conventional paver technology does not have the capability to withstand the loads experienced by landing pads during vehicle landing or take off. Use of existing technology may result in pavers being displaced by the plume of the vehicle, or exhaust from the vehicle entering spaces between paver seams and eroding the regolith underneath the landing pad. To address this issue, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Sidus Space developed a novel interlocking paver system enabling the robotic construction of high stability vertical takeoff and landing pads.