DARPA’s Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program, together with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has demonstrated automated assembly of a structure in space for the first time. A Caltech payload built a truss from separate components in orbit.
A simple gantry robot that moves along three linear axes joined composite truss members with custom-designed joints while deploying a thin reflective mesh. The demonstration tested a concept for future space-based antennas.
NOM4D aims to enable efficient, scalable construction of very large structures in space. Program manager Andrew Detor said the goal is to make structures hundreds of meters or even kilometers in scale.
Space structures are currently assembled on Earth, which limits how large they can be when folded for launch, or delivered in large pieces over multiple launches and assembled manually. The NOM4D approach would send materials to space as a kit and assemble them where they are needed.
The Caltech payload was launched into orbit at the end of March aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-16 mission. Momentus hosted it on its Vigoride platform and supported launch integration, communications, power, imaging and other services during the demonstration.
NOM4D has another milestone planned. Later this year, a team from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will send a project to the International Space Station to test a new method of processing composite materials in space.
