House tour: Tesserae habitat for living in space
SEATTLE, USA — Space Architecture lab Cambridge Aurelia Institute early this month installed a full-size mockup of Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments (Tesserae) in Museum of Flight, Seattle.
Tesserae, said the museum’s Senior Public Relations and Promotions Manager Ted Huetter, is a space station module that is part of the museum’s new gallery, Home Beyond Earth, which is all about space stations and living in space.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in its website, describes Tesserae as a “self-assembling space architecture” for “space-faring.” The Tesserae, when combined with other units, form into “geodesic dome habitats” that can be converted into “microgravity concert halls” and even “space cathedrals.”
For now, Tesserae is being tested at the International Space Station as a self-contained habitat for a crew of four, for example, two researchers and two astronauts, with enclosed exercise and hygiene areas, lab space, an open gallery area for meals and downtime, and a storage area containing sustenance enough for a six-month-long expedition.
“Rather than transporting fixed, rigid habitation modules and risking astronaut Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) during construction, we can lower payload weight, reduce assembly complexity, and revolutionize space-structure modularity by relying on reconfigurable, self-assembly,” explains MIT, which is undertaking a multi-year research effort to study, characterize, prototype and test Tesserae.
“Tesserae,” says MIT, takes its name and concept from the standard mosaic tiles of the ancient Romans, where the tiles or “tesserae” interlock to form a bigger creation. Likewise, every Tesserae structure is formed by a set of tiles that independently self-assemble into a particular geometry. Every tile is equipped with responsive sensing and a control code for bonding, clamping and sealing for pressurization together with other tiles.
The little gray tiles have electromagnetic poles that push and guide them to bond, and they have been tested in space, said Huetter. Once the tiles are in orbit around the earth, they self-assemble through magnets.
“These are the panels and those can be shipped up to space, take the rocket up to space stacked like a pancake and then released and they would find themselves and automatically come together and form a globe like that,” Huetter explained to Philstar.com and other press and Philippine Airlines executives during a tour of Tesserae in the museum last week.
“All you need to do, you will spacewalk to tighten things up, put the atmosphere in and now you can dock it with your space station or maybe another one that's already there and you can just build on that,” Huetter said on how Tesserae can be setup in space, as if one is pitching a tent.
The resulting soccer-ball-shaped volume is then pressurized and outfitted to house astronauts, researchers and future spacefarers.
Inside the space habitat is a clean, “honest” interior and “sterile atmosphere” devoid of wires and buttons, so it would not seem like one is “living on the inside of a computer as it does now,” said Huetter.
“So you want spaces where you can go relax and that's what this one is all about. So this would be where you go for a meeting. It can hold only about 10 people at the time,” he noted, “Tesserae, it's a self-assembling space habitat module which is still just kind of a fancy name for something like a space station and this particular one is configured as if this is where you would relax and eat.”
Inside the habitat is a kitchen with a small greenhouse, where fresh greens can be grown.
“They've grown plants, they call it aeroponics instead of hydroponic, but it's the same system. It would be using air, water mist for the time being,” Huetter shared.
Near the greenhouse is a module for cookers, including a fermentation capsule for Kimchi.
“In space, you can't boil things in the same way because there's no gravity. So, you would be more or less steam… So that's what that's designed for,” Huetter said of the cookers shaped like small dome aquariums. Like everything in the habitat, the cookers have been tested in space to make sure these would work.
Since there is no gravity in space, standard shelves would not work there, so in lieu of shelves, the Tesserae has a sea anemone-like, soft structure with tentacles that can hold things. “This would be something that you could store whatever, if you like, your pantry, you know, if you want to put your utensil in there or another food item or whatever, you just poke it in there,” said Huetter.
The shelf-alternative soft structure has a bigger version that in turn, can hold humans.
“So you know how the anemone has got all those tentacles? That's the idea this only represents. So again, without gravity, how do you lie down? So the idea is that we could just sort of snuggle into that because there's no gravity,” Huetter said, laughing at Philstar.com’s comment that it would be like being Nemo swimming through the sea grass. But instead of holding into the structure, the structure has been designed to catch and hold on to humans, Huetter clarified.
Above the Tesserae is a window with many functions, said Huetter. “You can look outside and these green things right here, they have a couple of functions, one of them to look nice, kind of like a stained glass window. But the fractal aspect is that they would contain green algae and that's where the color comes from. And the algae, these would be porous membrane on the inside. So they would actually contribute to the oxygen content and take care of the carbon dioxide in the air. So they would actually help with the air circulation and refreshing inside the habitat.”
To move around the structure, webbing is installed as “a way to travel around your house because you don't want to get stuck in the middle,” said Huetter.
“So this would be, you know, a comfortable atmosphere, but there'll be a space for, you know, this is where you're gonna have play music or whatever, you know, this would would be your meeting space onboard the space station,” he enthused.
“But because it's a modular design, you could have another one of these, that's all science, you know, you could replace these panels with scientific equipment or make it all a grow room. So it's part of the design, made to be changeable, easily changeable. Because things aren't easy in space. So that's a big plus.” — Video by Deni Rose M. Afinidad-Bernardo; additional video editing by Anjilica Andaya
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Editor's note: The tour to Seattle was hosted by Philippine Airlines to promote tourism in the area. At no stage does the host organization have a say on the stories generated from the coverage, interviews conducted, publication date and story treatment. Content is produced solely by Philstar.com following editorial guidelines.
