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Breakthrough mission architecture for mining lunar polar ice

Joel Sercel of Trans Astronautica Corporation was recently awarded a Phase II NIAC grant for a Lunar Polar Mining Outpost (LPMO) that promises to greatly reduce the cost of commercializing propellant production on the Moon. The system utilizes two patented innovative concepts for generating power and processing regolith. The first invention is a several meters tall solar reflector tower called a Sun Flower™ to gather sunlight at the permanently illuminated areas near the poles and reflect it down to megawatt level solar arrays near the outpost. The second concept called Radiant Gas Dynamic (RGD) mining combines microwave and infrared radiation to sublimate ice out from the regolith for storage in cryotraps on electric powered rovers. The outpost elements are designed to be delivered to the lunar surface using Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander.

Sercel states that “…LGMO promises to vastly reduce the cost of establishing and maintaining a sizable lunar polar outpost that can serve first as a field station for NASA astronauts exploring the Moon, and then as the beachhead for American lunar industrialization, starting with fulfilling commercial plans for a lunar hotel for tourists”

Diagram of Lunar Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (LPMO) concept
Credits: Joel Sercel
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Easy extraction of lunar water with Aqua Factorem

Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida (UCF) has just been awarded a Phase I NIAC grant to investigate an innovative water harvesting process that will be cheaper then conventional methods.

“This simple architecture requires the minimum number of in-space elements, and notably does not require an in-space propellant depot, so it provides the lowest cost and lowest risk startup for a commercial operation. The study will also test the innovative Aqua Factorem process through laboratory experiments, and this will produce basic insights into the handling of lunar resources”

Revised 6 May 2020: UCF/Today has an update on this story.

An illustration of what the UCF developed process could look like on the moon. Credit: NASA and Jessica Woodward/UCF
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ESA laying plans for lunar resource prospecting

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.

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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.

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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