The European Space Agency is developing a drill and analysis package called Prospect designed to extract water from lunar regolith. The miniature laboratory will fly to the Moon on Luna-27, a Russian spacecraft. Landing site selection is underway but no target date for the mission has been set.
Air from moondust
ESA proves feasibility of extracting air from simulated lunar regolith. This is a giant leap toward sustainable lunar settlements using ISRU. Here’s the bonus kicker: as a by product of the process, metal alloys are produced for other uses.
Living off the “land” in space
Lunar in situ resource utilization
Dennis Wingo summarizes the historical context and business case for ISRU to enable lunar settlements: https://denniswingo.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/chicken-egg-chicken-on-the-moon/
Zubrin’s Pioneer Astronautics tapped for research on Mars ISRU technologies
Parabolic Arc is reporting that NASA has selected Bob Zubrin’s Pioneer Astronautics for two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II awards for continuing research on developing technologies for in-situ resource utilization on Mars. http://www.parabolicarc.com/2019/05/23/bob-zubrins-pioneer-astronautics-selected-nasa-sbir-phase-ii-awards/#more-68982
Solar additive manufacturing using lunar regolith
Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency have published a paper in in the November 2018 Acta Astronautica demonstrating the feasibility of using solar energy to sinter lunar regolith in additive manufacturing. The in-situ resource utilization technique can be used to automate building roads and shielding lunar habitats prior to arrival of astronauts. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576518303874