Mon, Nov 17, 2008
Hawaiian Soil Simulates Lunar Environment
NASA recently 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
minimizing 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.
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