NASA Tests Lunar
Rovers And Oxygen Production Technology
(13 November 2008) NASA has concluded
nearly two weeks of testing equipment and lunar rover concepts on Hawaii's
volcanic soil.
The agency's In Situ Resource Utilization
Project, which studies ways astronauts can use resources found at landing
sites, demonstrated how people might prospect for resources on the moon and
make their own oxygen from lunar rocks and soil.
The tests helped NASA
gain valuable information about systems that could enable a sustainable and
affordable lunar outpost by minimising the amount of water and oxygen that must
be transported from Earth. The Pacific International Space Center for
Exploration Systems, known as PISCES and based at the University of Hawaii,
Hilo, hosted the tests. Research teams and NASA experts held the tests of
several NASA-developed systems in Hawaii because its volcanic soil is very
similar to regolith, the moon's soil.
NASA's lunar exploration plan
currently projects that on-site lunar resources could generate one to two
metric tons of oxygen annually. This is roughly the amount of oxygen that four
to six people living at a lunar outpost might breathe in a year. The field
demonstrations in Hawaii showed how lunar materials might be extracted. It also
showcased the hydrogen reduction system used to manufacture oxygen from those
materials and how the oxygen would be stored. These experiments help engineers
and scientists spot complications that might not be obvious in
laboratories.
A prototype system combines a polar prospecting rover and
a drill specifically designed to penetrate the harsh lunar soil. The rover's
system demonstrates small-scale oxygen production from regolith. A similar
rover could search for water ice and volatile gases such as hydrogen, helium,
and nitrogen, in the permanently shadowed craters of the moon's poles. Carnegie
Mellon University of Pittsburgh built the rover, which carries equipment known
as the Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile
Extraction.
Larger, complementary systems that might produce oxygen from
soil on an outpost-sized scale are known as ROxygen and the Precursor ISRU
Lunar Oxygen Testbed, or PILOT.
A NASA-developed robotic excavator known
as Cratos collected soil for the ROxygen system. Also tested was an excavator
developed by Lockheed Martin of Denver that uses a bucket drum to collect and
deliver soil to PILOT.
Other tested concepts include a new lunar wheel
Michelin North America of Greenville, S.C. developed; a lunar sample coring
drill the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology in Canada developed for NASA
with support from the Canadian Space Agency, or CSA; and a night vision camera
called TriDAR for the rover's navigation and drill site selection. Neptec in
Canada developed the camera with support from CSA.
Additional
instruments that were field tested will be used to improve understanding of
minerals found on the moon. They include a Mossbauer spectrometer from NASA's
Johnson Space Center in Houston and the University of Mainz in Germany; an
X-ray diffraction unit called mini CheMIN from NASA's Ames Research Center at
Moffett Field, Calif., and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico;
and a handheld Raman spectrometer CSA provided.
CSA also provided a
utility support vehicle from Ontario Drive Gear for personnel and hardware
transportation on site as well as to evaluate mobility attributes for future
human and project-related lunar mobility platforms. Representatives of the
German Space Agency demonstrated an autonomous mole drill technology developed
for Mars exploration that might be used in future lunar robotic
missions.
In addition to tests in laboratories and rock yards, NASA
conducts tests at sites around the world known as analogues because they
simulate the moonscape and other extreme environments. These analogue
activities take place in remote field locations where NASA can evaluate the
interactions of multiple mission systems relating to mobility, infrastructure,
and effectiveness in harsh climates. Hawaii's volcanic terrain, rock
distribution and soil materials provide a high-quality simulation of the moon's
polar region. Early demonstrations provide valuable information for subsequent
hardware and mission concept development.
These advanced capabilities
are being developed by the Exploration Technology Development Program of NASA's
Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The program is managed at NASA's
Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., with project teams from NASA's Johnson
Space Center; NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; NASA's Kennedy Space
Center in Florida, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., NASA's
Ames Research Center, and CSA. The collaboration also involves NASA's
Innovative Partnership Program and PISCES.
(source: NASA)