Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration Missions: The CIRA-TEDS Program Roadmap Perspectives

Abstract

The technologies and demonstrators for space exploration (TEDS) Program is an essential part of the Italian Aerospace Research Program (PRORA), for which execution was assigned to the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA) by the Italian Minister of Research. It was conceived in 2020 as a technology program aimed to mature several technologies, demonstrators, and engineering tools considered enabling for future space exploration and colonization missions. Indeed, Martian colonization and lunar colonization are foreseen to be the next steps in human space exploration, and long-term manned spaceflight and extra-terrestrial planet settlement are the inevitable trends of space technologies and will enhance human knowledge in several scientific fields, leading to better understanding of the wider universe and our place within it. But the robotic and manned exploration, for both short- and long-term missions and, above all, the possible habitation and the future colonization of the Moon, require to overcome numerous critical challenges e.g., protection from radiation and micro-meteorites, energy supply, extraction and recycling of water, food production, and much more. Moreover, the environmental issues that could negatively impact lunar surface missions include temperature fluctuations, triboelectrification, airless conditions, energetic particle exposure, and the lunar regolith dust particles. The present paper gives an overview of the (CIRA) development plan related to the (TEDS) program, focusing on the development of enabling technologies, both actual achievements and future perspectives.