Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science 2025 NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium: Part 1 — Lunar glass and starshades
Oct 15, 2025
Martin Bermudez, CEO of Skyports LLC, explores creating lunar habitats from glass blown from moon dust. Christine Gregg from NASA discusses architected metamaterials for stabilizing lightweight space structures, tackling challenges in imaging distant Earth-like exoplanets. Nobel laureate John Mather introduces an inflatable starshade concept, addressing the mechanics of observing planets around other stars. These pioneers share intriguing insights into the future of lunar living and advanced astronomical observatories.
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Moon Conditions Favor Glassblowing
- Lunar vacuum and low gravity reduce gas-bubble defects and lower blowing pressure needed for large glass forms.
- Those environment factors could make large blown spheres easier to form than on Earth.
Metamaterials Tame Space Vibrations
- Architected metamaterials can control vibrational modes and dissipate energy, enabling ultralight, stable large space structures.
- Christine Gregg targets dissipative designs to shorten settling times and allow lower-mass observatory components.
Assemble In Space, Don't Rely On Folding
- Favor in-space robotic assembly over complex monolithic deployables to enable larger metamaterial structures.
- Design components for rendezvous and assembly to bypass fairing size limits.