Introduction

The “Moon Village” concept, first proposed by ESA Director General Jan Woerner, is based on global cooperation among multiple nations and industry partners. Inspired by the unparalleled level of cooperation in creating the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon Village extends this paradigm to deep space activities. The initiative envisions a model of growth where many players combine resources to deploy a common infrastructure on the Moon that can then support a wide range of activities and missions. Around the world, there is renewed interest from commercial players and governments toward returning humans to the Moon and establishing a permanent settlement. The design for the Moon Village is based on modular habitation units, which are optimized for a range of parameters: structural efficiency, environmental protection, functional needs, and human comfort.

My Role

My role in the Moon Village Partnership was as the Primary Investigator and Chief Space Architect. I was responsible for initiating and helping build the partnership with ESA that began in 2018 working directly with ESA’s headquarters in Paris and the Director Generals office. Director General Jan Woerner had envisioned the framework known as the “Moon Village” and inspired me to pursue this vision with his team and experts at ESA. Together with ESA’s Director General office, I coordinated the formal agreement that included industry, government, and academia partners. I selected faculty at the Department of AeroAstro and Media Lab at MIT including Retired NASA Astronaut Jeffrey A Hoffman who brought valuable insights and experience from working and living in space as well as ESA Astronaut Claudie Haignere. Additionally, I was able to work with an interdisciplinary team at ESA across their different research and development facilities who showed great interest in developing a vision for the future human space exploration on the Moon. I was responsible for coordinating meetings with and working sessions with ESA scientists, engineers, and students as well as the team at SOM. Together we established the constraints, and mission architecture and developed a design that was integrated with the systems needed to support the concept of the Moon Village. I was the Chief Space Architect responsible for designing the vertical hybrid habitat architecture. I placed a significant emphasis on the integration of systems and habitability for the design as well as structural design and overall mission architecture. This project included a cross-functional interdisciplinary approach which was enabled by the international team. Together with ESA, I led an in-depth study of the architecture including mission concept design and systems engineering over a series of intense sessions conducted by the multidisciplinary team at the European Space Research & Technology Centre (ESTEC). The ESTEC team composition included expertise in (Systems, Mission Architecture, Structures, Thermal, Materials & Processes, Mechanisms, Radiation, Power, Life Support, Advanced Concepts, GNC, ISRU, Safety, and Architecture).