Project Olympus
Olympus is a space-based construction system under active development to support the future exploration of the Moon with NASA and for commercial lunar construction projects. The Olympus construction system is being designed and engineered to construct landing pads, roadways, non-pressurized structures, and pressurized habitats.
Commercial Space Services
ICON’s development of off-world construction systems for NASA has built up substantial knowledge, technology, and facilities that are extremely valuable to other commercial space efforts. To help accelerate humanity’s expansion into the stars, ICON now offers robotic systems, components, materials, and testing facilities to government and private space companies. Our in-house experts can assist with a variety of research and development efforts or provide support for your development efforts at ICON facilities. Contact us for inquiries about off-world services, or utilizing our facilities.
How Space-based Construction Works
Building structures in space is cost-prohibitive due to the expense of transporting entire structures or construction materials. ICON focuses on economically feasible solutions, utilizing In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). ISRU construction involves using local materials on celestial bodies like the Moon or Mars to construct off-world structures.
ICON develops innovative technologies that aim to convert lunar or Martian regolith into robust construction materials, using energy as the only consumable. These technologies enable 3D printing of structures, similarly to ICON's terrestrial construction.
Planetary Building Materials
ICON’s space construction technology produces an extremely strong building material from just lunar regolith (moon dust). These materials are stronger than concrete and can be printed in the hard vacuum of space to produce a variety of structures.
