As part of a competition organized by NASA, the Masten company proposes the development of a rover capable of extracting ice from the lunar surface to turn it into water vapour. Very precious, this resource could be used by the astronauts of the Artemis program on the Moon.
NASA and its partners plan to return humans to the Moon as early as 2024 as part of the Artemis program. Unlike the Apollo program, this time it will be a question of being permanently on the Moon. In the short term, the operating agencies will be able to transport freight from Earth, but these operations remain expensive. Subsequently, we will therefore have to draw on resources in situ, and in particular ice. Once processed, it could be consumed by astronauts, but also allow the cultivation of food or the production of fuel.
Based on observations of the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND), an instrument of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, it is believed that the shadowed areas of the lunar south pole, where should settle the next astronauts, could contain a lot of ice. With this in mind, several missions are being developed with the aim of isolating this ice directly on site. One thinks in particular of the VIPER mission, developed by the Astrobotic company, which will fly to the Moon in 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
That said, once we have isolated the presence of ice in the basement, we still need to be able to extract it. With this in mind, NASA has set up the "Break the Ice Lunar Challenge". In collaboration with Honeybee Robotics and Lunar Outpost, the Masten company proposes a rover named Rocket M. Thinking more than 1.1 tons, it will be delivered to the lunar surface by a lander which would also serve as a support station.
When deployed, the solar-powered craft could travel up to 3.45 km/h and negotiate 20% slopes according to Masten. The idea would be to move to pre-selected mining sites to deposit a metal pressure dome responsible for sealing the regolith (lunar soil). A small rocket engine capable of delivering 45 kilos of thrust would then be ignited to heat and ultimately pulverize this regolith up to two meters deep.
Once pulverized, the icy ore would then be sucked into the rover before being processed to be turned into water vapor and stored. According to the company, the whole process only takes five to ten minutes .
Masten estimates that the system, which has already been tested on a simulated lunar regolith, could mine a dozen craters a day. If we count on 100 kg of ice contained in a crater, this is equivalent to426 tons of water recovered in one year . Part of this water will then be used to produce the fuel needed for the rocket engine (oxygen and hydrogen by electrolysis), while the rest can be used for other purposes.
