The Excavation and Construction focus group will assist NASA in evaluating technologies that enable affordable, robust, autonomous manufacturing and construction on the lunar surface to establish a sustained human presence. It will help NASA assess technologies related to lightweight manufacturing, mining, and assembly equipment that can process in-situ lunar surface materials. Relevant manufacturing and assembly processes will be assessed some of which are additive construction, deployable metal structures, sintering, molten regolith fiber pulling, etc. The focus group will include discussions in the following technical categories:

• Autonomous vehicle and robots for E&C.
• Excavation technology for hard regolith/ice material.
• Habitat construction in lunar conditions using in-situ resources and specialized manufacturing and assembly equipment.
• Increased autonomy of operations.
• Risk Mitigation and identification, financial planning.

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Athonu Chatterjee

Lead E&C Facilitator

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Biography

Athonu Chatterjee

Lead E&C Facilitator

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

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Dr. Athonu Chatterjee is a researcher in the space exploration sector of APL. His background is in mechanical engineering, materials processing, and modeling and simulation. His present activities at APL include laser-material interaction, spacecraft design,and lunar exploration. Prior to joining APL, he worked at the research centers of General Electric (GE) and Corning. There he worked on new product and process development for diverse applications such as high-temperature ceramics matric composites (CMC) for aircraft engines, turbine blade manufacturing processes, solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC), micro-reactors, etc. He obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stony Brook University, NY.

Jibu Abraham

Biography

Jibu Abraham

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Jibu Abraham is a member of the Senior Staff in the Air & Missile Defense sector of APL. He has extensive experience in the full cycle development of complex flight related hardware. He has designed, developed and analyzed mechanical/electromechanical components for missile, UAV, and nuclear systems. His experience includes mechanical design, systems engineering, structural analysis, GD&T, and fabrication with rapid prototype systems.

Claudia Knez

Biography

Claudia Knez

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Dr. Claudia Knez is a Senior Scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory. She has a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. She has expertise in space environment applications, astronomy, systems engineering, and project management. She has participated in and led a number of diverse projects including several internally funded research projects.

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