The target engineer Next Frontier in lunar welding technology
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) April 14, 2025
While the plans to establish a long -term human presence on the Moon and Mars accelerate, the researchers develop new techniques to allow construction in hostile and low gravity environments. Such a revolutionary effort is underway at the University of Texas in Dallas, where Dr Wei Li creates a virtual lunar welding platform to support the assembly of large-scale structures in space.
Dr. Li, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, is the spearhead of a project funded by NASA aimed at solving one of the most difficult aspects of extraterrestrial infrastructure: welding in extreme lunar conditions.
“While we are trying to return to the moon and reach Mars, it is very important to keep astronauts while carrying out the missions,” said Dr. Edward White, professor and head of mechanical engineering. “Being on earth orbit is much easier to know than when things go wrong, we can do repairs and come back safely. I am really delighted that Dr. Li’s research contributes to playing an important role in making journeys in space safer and will allow us to successfully finish space missions.”
The three -year initiative, supported by a subsidy of innovations at an early NASA stage of up to $ 750,000, Place Li among six beneficiaries at the nationwide scale for their quest for high impact space technologies. His work focuses on the simulation and the analysis of the unique challenges faced by astronauts during welding on the moon.
“There are three main challenges for astronauts working on the surface of the moon,” said Li. “The moon has a very thin atmosphere, there are therefore steep temperature changes, less than 387 degrees Fahrenheit at 260 degrees fahrenheit. There is also an extreme vacuum environment due to the thin atmosphere.”
Welding operations must take these volatile factors into account, which can introduce defects such as fractures and cracks that compromise the integrity of materials. Despite the difficulty, controlling welding in space is essential to the broader vision of NASA for the construction of lunar bases and habitats in depth.
“It would be very difficult to establish regular machining workshops on the surface of the moon to make metallic structures as we do on earth,” said Li. “However, it may be possible to use spaceships to send metal components from earth to moon, then deploy welding technology to assemble components in large structures that could allow the establishment of a human community.”
LI’s research includes simulations of various welding methods under lunar type conditions, including electric arc welding, laser and electron. A key tool in its laboratory is a directed energy deposit machine, commonly used in the manufacture of metal additives. The platform also allows the exploration of non-metallic construction via the modeling of merged deposits, expanding its relevance for 3D printing in space.
Thanks to the complete advanced manufacturing laboratory, Li and its team will reproduce the lunar conditions in Ut Dallas while collaborating with NASA researchers such as Dr. Fredrick Michael of the Marshall Space Flight Center in NASA. Their objective is to validate their simulation models using both ground tests and historical missions of missions like Skylab.
This platform, once validated, could be adapted to other applications beyond the moon, including Mars and the international space station, helping to shape the future of manufacturing and construction in space.
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