NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge Team

The Team

We are the Mines Martian Manufacturers, the Colorado School of Mines team competing in the NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. Our team consists of 6 undergraduate mechanical engineering students and support from ICON, a company based in Austin, TX that specializes in 3D printing full size houses.

The Challenge

The 3D Printed Habitat Challenge is one of NASA's Centennial Challenges and involves developing the additive construction technology necessary to build sustainable housing for deep space exploration. The Challenge began in 2015 and consists of three phases: design, materials, and fabrication. We entered the Challenge in 2018 at Phase 3, which involves building a giant 3D printer with the capability to 3D print concrete habitats for astronauts on Mars. Find more information about the Challenge here.

The Printer

In August, we began constructing our 3D printer from scratch. Our gantry-style printer has a base that is 23 x 25 feet and stands over 15 feet tall. It extrudes our unique concrete mix that the team also developed from scratch. The concrete mix consists mainly of materials that exist naturally on Mars in order to maximize points in the competition.

Our Goal

In the previous stage of the Challenge, our team placed 4th! For the final stage of the Challenge, we will travel to Peoria, IL at the end of April to compete head-to-head against companies and universities from across the world. We aim to autonomously print a 1:3 scale model of the full scale habitat of our own design. Our goal for the Challenge is to place in the top three.

Your Donation

Our goal for this campaign is to raise $5,000. Your gift will be applied towards travel costs to send our team and ship our printer to the final stage of the Challenge. Additional funds raised will be used for other Challenge-related expenses and to make further improvements on the printer. In the event that we're unable to travel to the final stage of the Challenge, we would print our entry at Mines and any remaining funds would be used to prepare for the next phase of the NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge.

Thank you so much for your support! We greatly appreciate your help.