Mining Drinking Water

In 1994, NASA announced the discovery of water ice on the moon by the Clementine spacecraft, a joint space venture with the US military.  The water is in the Moon’s poles which never see the sun, and where the temperature is about -250 deg Fahrenheit. In 2009, NASA slammed the spacecraft LCROSS into the Cabeus crater (Diam: 100.58 km, Depth: 5.71 km) at the Moon’s south pole, to see what kind of materials the impact kicked up. The mission found about 5 percent water and 2 percent sodium in the debris that was ejected. The mission had 2 components, one slammed into the crater and created debris that rose about 800 meters, and the second, which had a spectrometer, flew into the debris and analyzed it.

Since then, we learned that water exists in the glass beads in the Moon’s regolith. These glass beads, or spherules, are formed when silicate particles on the lunar surface are hit by meteorites.

The Moon’s regolith is about 45 percent oxygen (combined with silicate minerals). One hypothesis that attempts to explain water on the Moon, suggests that the solar wind which bombards the Moon helps create the water. The solar wind is mostly protons or positively charged hydrogen atoms. Scientists believe that if Hydrogen particles travel at one-third the speed of light and hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in the lunar soil. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form.

Proposed Methods to Mine Water on the Moon:

• Colorado School of Mines’ Thermal Mining Method.

• The University of Texas as part of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts, NIAC, is working on a system that would be capable of harvesting 10,000 kg of water per year. The University of Texas scientists plan to show a mining technique that digs up water, metal, and other useful materials, all at the same time. The only problem will be the amount of electricity they will need for the project to work on the Moon.

• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab proposes mining water from the Moon’s south pole or the ‘peaks of eternal light using beams of sunlight from giant reflectors onto the Shackleton Crater.

NASA also identified Hydrogen on the floor of the Shackleton Crater ( Diam: 21 km, Depth: 1 km ) and drilling is required to determine the form of hydrogen and its concentration. If drilling proves hydrogen can be mined in water form, the Shackleton crater floor could be mined for hydrogen and water.

Materials and Coatings for Lunar Drills:

• Lunar drills have to withstand the Moon’s extreme temperatures and leaping lunar dust. Temperatures on the Moon vary between -150 °C at night and 100 °C when facing the Sun. Drills could hibernate during the harsh lunar nights to save power and work during the day.

• Lunar dust particles are as fine as flour and as sharp as glass, and if they clog equipment, they can cause overheating and equipment failure. Any surface activity on the Moon disturbs the lunar dust; this dust caused several problems for the Apollo missions. To help deal with lunar dust, NASA Goddard developed the Lotus Surface-Cleaning Coating, which can be used to coat drills and other equipment on the Moon to protect them from lunar dust.

Strategies for Exploration and Mining on the Moon:

• Simplify the lunar drilling equipment. Design so that equipment sends data to be analyzed on Earth instead of sending heavy rovers to analyze samples on the Moon.

• PTScientists, a small space company in Berlin, has a cutting-edge Moon rover design that weighs about 35 kilograms. They have been designing their 3D-printed Audi Lunar Quattro in partnership with Audi for 9 years. Alina spacecraft is designed to transport the lunar rover to the Moon.

• Use Lotus Coating from Goddard to coat the equipment to avoid contamination by lunar dust.

• The Moon’s gravitational pull is only one-sixth that of the Earth. A 3-kilogram drill will weigh 0.5 kilograms on the Moon but still have 3 kilograms of mass. Lunar drills have to be designed differently from those we use on Earth.

• It costs more than $1.2 Million to send a Kilogram payload from Earth to the surface of the Moon (using an Astrobotic payload guide).

• Operating a 3-kilogram drill on the Moon would require about 300 W of continuous power.

• If we develop, It will take about 1.5 seconds to send radio signals from Shackleton to Earth (about 400,000 km).

• The Curiosity Rover is a significant engineering accomplishment, yet it has only been drilled 15 times on Mars since it arrived there in 2012. Instead of systems like the Mars Rover and others described below, we are designing micro drills that send data to be analyzed on Earth. These micro drills could be used on the Moon, Mars, or anywhere.

2018-2025 International Missions to Moon South Pole:

January 2019 – China landed its Chang’e-4 spacecraft in the Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon, south pole region at South Pole-Aitken (SPA), the Von Karman Crater (Diameter: 2,500 km, Depth: 13 km). The Moon’s circumference is about 11,000 km, meaning the Aitken basin covers nearly a quarter of the Moon. Chang’e-4 and the solar power small rover Yu2, landed in the Von Karman Crater, about 111 miles in diameter, in the Aitken Basin.  Y2 has been roaming Von Karman Crater since then. SPA has varied geology that includes ancient impact melt, basalts, and excavated substrate materials; dating samples from SPA would help study the solar system’s evolution.

The Chinese lander was designed to last for a year, and the rover was to operate for four months to collect data about the geology and formation of the crater. The rover and lander use the satellite Queqiao to communicate with the Chinese Space Agency.

2018 – 2024 – NASA Artemis project might include several mining initiatives. The plan is to land the First Woman and the next man on the Moon in 2024. Artemis will help NASA build a Lunar Gateway and establish a presence on the Moon. In the Artemis Accord, NASA describes the Lunar Gateway as an international collaboration with U.S. commercial companies, as well as the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA),  Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the Australian Space Agency (ASA).

To prepare for Artemis, NASA established the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to send small robotic landers and rovers mostly to the lunar south pole region in support of crewed missions.

In May 2019, NASA warded 3 lander contracts to Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and OrbitBeyond. In July 2019, NASA announced the selection of twelve additional payloads provided by universities and industry. Seven of these are scientific investigations, while five are technology demonstrations. In 2020 NASA awarded Astrobotics $200 Million to develop the lander that will take VIPER to the Moon in 2023. In April 2020, NASA selected Masten Space Systems for a follow-on CLPS delivery of cargo to the Moon in 2022. Several commercial companies compete for different Artemis components, including Human Lander.

• The first Mobile Water Mapping Robot on the Moon:
• VIPER – Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover is NASA’S new golf-cart-sized rover that will explore Crater Nobile ( Diam: 73.54 km, Depth: 3.74 km) at the Moon South Pole for water ice and hydrogen in November 2024. The rover will carry a 1-meter drill and walk the Shackleton crater’s surface, relying on Spectrometer System, known as NSS, to detect “wet” areas below the surface. In each area, VIPER will stop and drill, using TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrains), developed with Honeybee Robotics, to dig up to a meter beneath the surface. Two instruments will analyze drill samples: the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations, or MSolo, developed out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center; and NIRVSS, developed by Ames, is the Nar InfraRed Volatiles Spectrometer System. NIRVSS will show if any hydrogen found by the rover is water or hydroxyl.
• VIPER is expected to weigh more than 1,000 kg, and the cost per payload to land it on the Moon is $1.2 Million, so to get it to the Moon, where it will work for 100 days, will cost at least $1.2 Billion.

HERACLES (Human-Enhanced Robotic Architecture and Capability for Lunar Exploration and Science) is a planned ESA–JAXA–CSA space cargo transport system that will include a robotic lunar lander called European Large Logistic Lander (EL3); it will explore the Schrödinger Crater (Diam: 13 km, Depth: unknown) on the Far Side of the Moon. EL3 is expected to weigh 1,800 kilograms (4,000 lb); launching EL3 at $1.2 Million per kg will be about $2.1 Billion.

EL3 will carry a Canadian robotic rover that will prospect potential resources on the floor of the Schrödinger crater, one of a few Moon locations showing evidence of geologically recent volcanic activity. EL3 can load samples up to 15 kg (33 lb) on the ascent module. The Canadian robotic arm will collect and transfer these samples to the Orion spacecraft, which will travel to Earth with the returning astronauts.

In June 2020, the Canadian Space Agency issued RFPs to design its upcoming space missions. Some will be independent missions, and others will be negotiated with NASA.

2025 – The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and the European Space Agency (ESA) plan to send a lander, Luna 27, to the Aitken Crater (Diam: 137 km, Depth: 6 km) at the Moon South Pole by August 2025.

Luna 27 will prospect for minerals, lunar water ice, and volatiles (hydrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and sulfur dioxide). ESA will contribute to the design of the mission, and the drill ProSEED, a percussion drill designed to drill up to 2 meters below the lunar surface. ProSEED will collect and return samples to a mini lab called ProSPA for analysis.

2029 – JAXA and Toyota Motor build Fuel-Cell Powered Lunar Rover

In anticipation of Japan’s manned missions to the Moon, JAXA plans to launch its first rover mission in space with Toyota’s rover, which will have 162 sq feet of living space, to accommodate 2 – 4 people. Astronauts can live in this rover without their spacesuits; the vehicle will be driven by astronauts or controlled remotely.

The rover is designed for cruising 6,200 miles on the surface of the Moon. The rover is powered by fuel cells and will have solar panels for additional energy. No estimates about the materials or weight of the vehicle are given.

On 10 July 2020, NASA and JAXA signed a “JEDI” agreement to work on Artemis projects. Artemis will be the next step to international cooperation in space exploration. The JAXA and Toyota robots will be one of many that will be tested on the Moon for future use on Mars.

Launching the Toyota rover into space will probably cost three times as much as EL3; even if launch costs are lower by 2029, it will cost at least $4 Billion to launch this rover.

Profitable Mining on the Moon?

To have profitable Lunar Mining, we need simplified equipment and different designs to avoid the high cost of sending payloads as heavy as EL3 (1,800 kg) to the Moon, at a cost of over $2 Billion. To break even, more than $3 Billion worth of products would have to be mined to cover the cost of launching and operating EL3.

Surveying the Moon with surface gravimetry can help identify where to drill for specific materials. In 1972, Apollo 17 used the Traverse Gravimeter Experiment (TGE), which was built by Draper Labs at MIT. TGE measured the thickness of the basalt in the Taurus Littrow Valley, a lunar area with a five-gravity anomaly; it estimated that basalt thickness is about one kilometer. Today, smaller space gravimeters can be used to find out where to drill for ice water deposits. PTScientists plan to take a small gravimeter to Taurus Littrow Valley for a follow-up TGE survey of Apollo 17.

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