A collaborative effort by a team of experts from industry, government, and academia has developed an economically viable model for a sustainable lunar propellant production infrastructure to support lunar settlement and cis-lunar operations. The team’s findings were published in the March issue of REACH (link below). To reduce costs and weight, the proposal replaces conventional mining equipment for excavating, hauling, and processing with lightweight heating enclosures to extract water by sublimation out of the regolith for subsequent electrolysis into hydrogen an oxygen. The study established feasibility and a path to commercialization. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352309318300099#aep-article-footnote-id1
Cutting-edge technology enabling settlement of the solar system and beyond – Art by Rick Guidice / NASA
