Greenland
Two young Danish architects recently travelled to a deserted and remote area in Greenland
to test an intelligent lunar home that they themselves designed and built, relying on Lenovo technology for survival and data collection. The goal is to get one step closer to the dream of inhabiting the moon.
The research project was led by two young Danish architects from SAGA Space Architects, Karl-Johan Sørensen and Sebastian Aristotelis.
The Lenovo technology they are using is the ThinkCentre M90n, which won a 2020 Good Design award from The Chicago Athenaeum.
Isolated and confined in one of the harshest climates on Earth, they endured 30°C, hurricane wind and hungry polar bears.
For three months, the two adventurer Danes lived in a deserted, Arctic area in Greenland in a lunar home, Mark 1, which they have designed and built themselves.
“We were going to be totally isolated. The landscape is monotonous. There are no surrounding stimuli, and therefore it will be the most faithful simulation of what it will be like to live on the moon, which we can simulate here on Earth,” says architect Sebastian Aristotelis.
The home is packed with technology; e.g.solar panels to generate power for 1 computer and 76 sensors, which among other things ensure that the habitat works in extreme environments with -30 degrees.
“Odin is the brain in the lunar home. It is a small fanless Lenovo ThinkCentre M90n computer that is connected to the sensors and predicts maintenance needs. If one of the sensors detects that the humidity is rising or the temperature is falling, it prompts the team that there may be a fault in a certain panel,” says 25-year-old Sebastian Aristotelis.
On-site, the team collected unique metrics and assessing biometric data on multiple aspects of themselves and the habitat, like for example a plant wall, assessing the survival of plants in this environment. At the same time, the architects collaborated with 20 research teams, who are granted access to the collected data to get one step closer to the dream of moving to the moon.
During the three months, the research opportunities were extremely limited. The two Danes needed to carefully plan and prioritize their time and efforts. Every day, they will work on a regular schedule of eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work and eight hours of entertainment.
A large part of their waking hours they spent in front of their notebooks. The notebooks were essential to maintain a steady communication line with the outside world to ensure they are secure at all times.
“We needed to be able to trust that our notebooks and technology are working perfectly at all times. The computers were paramount to the mission: we used them for survival, our work, and they were our only source of entertainment, so they need to be reliable at all times in these extreme conditions, and since many of my previous computers have been made by Lenovo, we were never in doubt about our choice,” emphasizes Sebastian Aristotelis.
The specific technology the team brought on the expedition are two ThinkPad P53’s from their sponsor, Lenovo. The computers had been military tested and built to handle extreme conditions and demanding tasks such as heavy architectural drawings.
“We were extremely pleased with the opportunity that the SAGA Space architects is bringing to us. It was the ultimate challenge for our products to showcase the effort we put into securing durability and reliance. We wish them a lot of success on many more adventures,” said Andreas Schupp, Director of Innovation Design Center at Levono.
Architects: SAGA Space Architects
Manufacturer: Lenovo Group Limited
