hi
i'm jerry sanders i am the isru
system capability lead for nasa it's my
job to
understand and and promote the
the area of isru and i'm glad to be able
to talk to you today
so i'm going to talk about in situ
propellant and consumable production and
what nasa is doing
and how small businesses can play an
important role
so when we go to the first chart you'll
see that
the space technology mission directorate
of nasa
is coordinating all technology
development areas
through four major thrusts associated
with
exploration go land
live and explore and in the
live area it's aimed at sustainable
living and working farther from earth in
situ resource utilization falls into
this
category with the main outcome
of providing greater than 75
of the propellant and consumables for
human
exploration from lunar and mars
resources
we've further subdivided that particular
outcome into three major sub outcomes
resource mapping estimation how do we
find
and categorize and locate the resources
and understand them
oxygen extraction from regolith being
able to produce oxygen from regolith
at about 10 or more metric tons per year
for at least
five years and then water mining being
able to enable
cis lunar commercial markets through the
extraction of up to hundreds of metric
tons of propellant per year
and how this would help reusable landers
and cislunar transportation systems
so when we look at the next chart which
deals with lunar resources
we've kind of combined and looked at
them into two major categories
resources that exist in the lunar
regolith and resources that exist in the
poles
of the moon's permanently shattered
craters
so regolith itself contains up to 40
percent
oxygen by mass mostly in silicate
minerals
and can be subdivided into two rough
categories the mare
the very black material you see when you
look up at the moon
and the highland polar regolith which is
the lighter material mostly an orthosite
and that's the area that we are
primarily interested in because
artemis is focusing on going to the
south pole
there's also other other resources
pyroclastic
glasses kreep and solar wind volatiles
that might be considered downstream but
the real goal
is water and other volatiles that might
exist in the permanently shattered
craters
there could be 5.5 weight percent
in those shattered craters that we saw
from the lcross impact
and then maybe as much as 30 wt %
so when we go to the next chart and we
look at
what is really isru we've broken it down
into
the flow from understanding the
resources
looking for the water and minerals to
the two different pathways depending on
the resource
being able to excavate and process
regolith for oxygen and metals or or
mine that water in the volatiles and
those products
are primarily aimed at transportation
and crew so the water
the the oxygen the hydrogen and such
would be then stored and then sent to
the users and some of these products
could also be used for
helping to build landing pads roads
shielding and structures
on the next chart we see that we've
broken down isru into four major
categories and cross cutting
the the destination reconnaissance
and the resource assessment that i
mentioned how you acquire those
resources prepare them
and deliver them processing them into
oxygen and metal
and other consumables
and being able to create feedstock
for construction and manufacturing and
the the bolded areas
are the ones that we're currently
focusing on primarily the two green
arrows at the bottom
show that we are working very closely
with the advanced material structures
and manufacturing group
because many of the techniques and
technologies that we're interested in
will be used in those construction and
manufacturing efforts
the next chart is just an idea of
how each one of the different areas
functional blocks flow with each other
so
we'll be looking at technologies that
fit into each one of these boxes
and understand how they influence the
functional boxes before and afterwards
as a way of helping us
understand and develop technologies
at a very small level that can fit into
larger systems
the chart after that just shows the fact
that
to make isru work we have to combine
technologies from across the board
robotics
autonomy power systems
cryogenic fluid management systems and
such and so we've developed a way of how
we track
those interactions with each other and
this chart just allows us to
to better do that so that you can see
what's going on
the next chart shows the basic evolution
of how we plan on extracting and
processing these resources into products
we can't get to that tens and hundreds
of metric tons of product right away so
we
start working at a demonstration scale
which would then lead us to an
end-to-end pilot that demonstrates all
of the aspects associated with
with producing oxygen or water and
propellants
at a scale but not necessarily in a
mission-critical role
and that would then feed into how we
implement isru
at a larger scale for maybe crewed ascent
vehicles or
or or reusing the descent stages
or even a single stage lander that can
go up and down on propellant so it gives
it allows us to understand how those
technologies will need to be scaled up
and how other areas such as power and
cryogenics and such have to scale up
with us
the next chart shows that the way that
nasa
and the space technology mission
directorate is
looking at isru and these two paths
is to to look at the fact that if we can
mine water and turn that into oxygen and
hydrogen and have that water available
that's game changing that can change how
we do all of our architectures
so we're primarily focusing the on that
as our leader
if we can make that work then
many things can happen but we recognize
that there is uncertainty in what are
the resources and
the permanently shattered craters we
know a lot about the regolith
from our apollo missions and such
so as a follower as a backup and a risk
reduction activity
we're also pursuing pursuing oxygen
extraction
and metal extraction from regolith in
parallel
when we look at the next chart we kind
of see this flow
of starting at ground development
activities on technologies such as
drilling and working on simulants and
and ground development of oxygen
extraction from regolith
that's going on right now to very early
missions
to look at how we would um understand
the resources
in the permanently shattered craters
prime one
and the viper mission in particular are
are set to fly
in the 2022 and 2023 time frame
to help us better understand and provide
ground truth of those
polar resources that will lead us to
flying on the order of two to three
different types of demonstrations
at a technology scale to
see how isru operates in the real lunar
environment with
real lunar regolith or in permanently
shadowed craters
and based on the lessons learned of all
of these different activities
we'll pick one of the two pathways
whether it's oxygen extraction from
regolith
or polar water mining and processing
into oxygen and hydrogen
as our step for the pilot plant once the
pilot plant is done
we can then go into full scale
production
for for landers and other applications
the next chart kind of shows a concept
of operations that we might use
associated with looking for water
whether it's a very short exploration
exploratory evaluation or very detailed
focused
exploration that might be needed to
understand the resources
the chart after that starts to talk
about
the water mining aspects we're currently
at a very low
technology readiness level and we
understand that to
select this mining technique we really
need to understand
not just the mining technique itself but
also how we're going to get power into
the permanently shadow crater
and how we're going to remove the water
from the permanently shattered crater to
where
we set up our bases outside where the
astronauts exist
so we started to look at a number of
different technologies
none of them are perfect at this point
and so we're pursuing
several different pathways the chart
after that
shows basically our concept of operation
for oxygen and metal extraction
where we have a lot more experience
we've
developed several technologies we've
performed system level and uh tests at
analog
sites in hawaii but there are a number
of different factors that we have to
understand and a number of options that
exist when
furthering this work so
where are we today on all of this well
this last chart is
somewhat of an eye chart hopefully
you'll have a chance to look at it in
detail on your own
but it starts to break down what are the
gaps that we see
when we look at these three major
efforts
how do i find the resources and assess
them how do i
mine water and permanently shadow
craters and how do i extract oxygen
from that lunar regolith how do we
demonstrate the techniques that are
scalable
operating under these extremely harsh
conditions
with extremely abrasive regolith for
very long periods of time
and to give you an insight we have been
working
in with small businesses for decades
allowing them to develop different
technologies that flow into our systems
um and in particular so on the left hand
side i'm showing what areas we focused
on
and what were some of the technologies
that were selected to give you an
idea of of what we've worked on in the
past
and to let you know we look at sbirs
very seriously
to such an extent that our second field
test in hawaii was
made up of hardware that had been
developed through partnerships
with small businesses in all the
different areas
from and we called it dust to thrust
because it included
the ability to excavate process store
and utilize the products
in particular oxygen from the hawaii
tephra
and with that i'll bring my presentation
to a conclusion
thank you