Masten Space Systems (Masten) is leading a team developing a novel method to efficiently, reliably, and ultimately economically mine lunar water ice and frozen volatiles. The target volatiles occur on top of, and within regolith at the Moon's poles. The system architecture for excavation and capture of the water involves the novel use of rocket engines. Precision firing of a short-burst rocket creates deep cratering, disaggregation of the regolith, sublimation of the frozen volatiles, and capture via condensation in the collection vessel. Operations are conducted under a mobile containment dome to capture volatiles, and to allow for ease of movement to continue recovery of economic grades of frozen volatiles. Preliminary tests performed by Masten and Honeybee demonstrate project viability. The system offers low weight and low maintenance lunar mining solutions. The project includes development of exploration methodologies, volatile volumes and grade verification, and constraints on positive economic returns and markets for target sites.
Practical and Economic Rocket Mining of Lunar Ice
17th Biennial International Conference on Engineering, Science, Construction, and Operations in Challenging Environments ; 2021 ; Virtual Conference
Earth and Space 2021 ; 444-457
2021-04-15
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Practical and Economic Rocket Mining of Lunar Ice
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