Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

View of Giordano Bruno crater on the far side of the Moon.
Image credit: NASA

How can you transport materials across the Moon’s surface and keep annoying, debilitating dust out of lunar habitats?

Enter a Caltech team that is designing a Lunar Architecture for Tree Traversal in-service-of Cable Exploration, space speak boiled down to LATTICE.

The LATTICE team is looking into a self-deploying modular robotic system for transporting ice and other assets in and out of craters.

Image: Caltech LATTICE team.

The ski lift-like system would work like a zip line on the Moon, complete with driving stakes in the ground, cables are then attached to the stakes, and cargo would be transporting by the cables in robotic shuttles.

Prototype tested

LATTICE was among seven finalists in NASA’s 2022 Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

Testing of hardware underway at Caltech.
Image credit: Caltech/LATTICE Team

Last November, the LATTICE team tested a small-scale prototype of its system in a desert in California’s Lucerne Valley.

The Caltech team has also blueprinted HOMES – shorthand for Habitat Orientable & Modular Electrodynamic Shield.

Check out this video at: https://youtu.be/i8O0wPSCtjg