Making the space habitable

The team of the Smart Systems and Materials Laboratory of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Tartu has just successfully finished a three year research program, financed by the 7th frame program of the European Commission. The goal was to build the first European testbed of a space habitat. The projects code name SHEE stands for Self-Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments. The habitat is the first testbed built in Europe and is unique in the world as the only one that can be transported to different space analogue simulation sites using regular road transport. The project tried to reach also other goals besides the obvious one of helping to realise the dream of setting up colonies on other planets. The habitat is an attempt to come up with a solution for living in extreme environments on the earth, or to set up a readily functioning shelter in situations when there is no time for building one on site, like in rescue situations in disaster areas. The habitat is equipped with everything needed for a crew of two on a 2 week mission. It deploys itself fully automatically in a few minutes.

 

 

Making the space habitable.

The team of the Smart Systems and Materials Laboratory of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Tartu has just successfully finished a three year research program, financed by the 7th frame program of the European Commission. The goal was to build the first European testbed of a space habitat. The projects code name SHEE stands for Self-Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments. The habitat is the first testbed built in Europe and is unique in the world as the only one that can be transported to different space analogue simulation sites using regular road transport. The project tried to reach also other goals besides the obvious one of helping to realise the dream of setting up colonies on other planets. The habitat is an attempt to come up with a solution for living in extreme environments on the earth, or to set up a readily functioning shelter in situations when there is no time for building one on site, like in rescue situations in disaster areas. The habitat is equipped with everything needed for a crew of two on a 2 week mission. It deploys itself fully automatically in a few minutes.

The habitat is a result of cooperation between different European institutions active in developing space technology. The architectural concept was developed by Liquifer Systems Group from Austria. Systems Engineering was done by Space Applications Services from Belgium. Sobriety from Check Republic carried out numerical simulations. Spin from Check Republic took care of public relations and outreach. Comex from France built the life support and environmental control system. Project coordinator and the party that operates the finished habitat is the International Space University in Strasbourg. University of Tartu was responsible for designing the subsystems for robotic motion, power and thermal control, structural design of the habitat shell and last but not least we built the habitat structure.

Further information at http://www.shee.eu and priit.kull@ut.ee.