Inspenet, February 21, 2023
Austrian company PneumoCell has developed an inflatable habitat concept called PneumoPlanet, which could house up to 32 astronauts and contain 16 greenhouses that would allow them to grow food in the lunar environment.
The project, financed by the OSIP program of ESA (European Space Agency), involves an ultralight inflatable structure, which, once installed, is covered with lunar regolith to protect it from cosmic radiation. The habitat will function self-sufficiently in the long term by producing and recycling its own oxygen and food within large greenhouses and using exclusively energy from solar radiation.
The PneumoPlanet team designed a feasibility study that suggests locating the habitat in the vicinity of one of the lunar poles where sunlight is almost permanently available.
These habitats will use innovative mirror technology that rotates towards the sun and reflects visible sunlight back to the greenhouses. At the top, a hyperbolic framed tower supports a mirror membrane that reflects incoming sunlight horizontally into an artificial crater, where another cone-shaped mirror directs sunlight into the toroidal greenhouse.
The tower is based on a circular magnetic track and rotates to follow the direction of the sunlight. To simulate night, the mirror is simply turned away from the sun for 5-6 hours within each 24-hour cycle.
Source : https://pneumocell.com/projects/pneumo-planet-moon-habitat/ – https://moonhabitat.space
Illustrations : Pneumocell
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