Australia and NASA are joining hands to mine the Moon. Here’s how they plan to do it

The Apollo project was a camping trip compared to what Australia and NASA have planned for a return to the Moon.

“We use the term living off the land,” Gerald Sanders, from NASA Johnson Space Centre, says.

NASA plans to understand how to use resources where missions land, instead of blasting everything off and bringing it all back.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to walk on the moon and the last Apollo mission saw a crew stay for more than three days in 1972.

“We’d like to go there for longer periods of time,” Mr Sanders says.

“You’ll start with bringing small habitats with you to live in while you build your bigger infrastructure for the next generation,” he says.

He is head of “in-situ resource utilisation”, which is about making use of resources found on other planets and moons and not leaving a mess.

“We’re talking about extracting metals, silicon and ceramics for making spare parts, eventually maybe the landing pads and roads to protect the hardware.”

The film The Martian, where actor Matt Damon grows potatoes on Mars, is a perfect example, Mr Sanders says.

“He had an oxygenator in that movie, and NASA has flown similar technology on the Perseverance rover that’s now on Mars.”

Regolith

The car-sized rover “Percy” is also supported by a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity in a search for signs of past microbial life, rock samples, and preparation for future human exploration.

Setting up for the long haul also means rethinking what a moon mission can take, because every kilogram that is landed on the lunar surface needs 200kg on the launch pad to get it there.

“If I don’t have to bring something, then either my launch vehicle gets smaller or I can fill up my launch vehicle with more important things than a tank of water or oxygen or a block of metal that I will turn into something,” Mr Sanders says.

“We’re starting small, we’ll do basic tests on our ideas on how you might move regolith – a fancy term for the soil on the moon.”

Technologies are being developed to turn regolith into metals, with oxygen – not carbon dioxide – as a by-product.

‘Incredibly green’

Mr Sanders’ counterpart at CSIRO is Dr Jonathon Ralston, who is leading an Australian team to develop technologies that NASA will need.

“There is no carbon on the moon, there is no water on the moon, and energy is difficult,” Dr Ralston says.

“The first step is to understand what the resource is so that we can then begin to understand how we can utilise that well.

“From the get-go, it will have to be incredibly green,” Dr Ralston says.

“It’s about making use of the materials where you find them and doing that in a closed-loop way,” he said.

For example, there are processes where water or acids are used to leach out or extract certain metals from lunar regolith but those will have to be created and can’t be vented on the moon.

Instead, everything must be repurposed and recycled.

“That circular economy is baked into everything we do,” Mr Sanders says.

The stakes are high, because producing a mere one kilogram of a resource such as water, oxygen or a building material on the Moon could save tens of thousands of dollars.

Usually, a pristine environment is needed for developing satellites, rovers or other space equipment but researchers are faced with a different situation.

Testing is occurring in what are called “dirty vacuum chambers”, including at the University of Adelaide.

“They simulate the hard vacuum you find on the moon,” Dr Ralston explains.

“We’re breathing oxygen all the time, and it’s incredibly hard to picture what a hard vacuum is like and what that might do to your electronics and all your systems.”

He says regolith is an amazing potential resource for generating critical life support, but is also a tremendous challenge because it is abrasive and sticks to any mechanical parts

“The material is both a friend and a foe,” Dr Ralston says.

“We’re moving from a short-term mission to how would we begin to set up sustained activity,” he said.

That means all the equipment must be very robust and low maintenance.

Robots remotely controlled from Earth could look after the site, using sensing and control technology designed for mining.

“The moon is an extreme ultra-remote version,” Dr Ralston says.

Off-Earth mining

Off-Earth mining was a popular topic at the recent World Mining Congress, which was held in Australia for the first time since the international forum began in the 1950s.

Prospecting, extraction, remote operations, and resource production were debated, as the space and mining industries dig in for a technology transfer between the two environments.

“We heard during the last couple of days here about all the challenges terrestrial miners face – automation, electrification, decarbonisation, getting people out of hazardous environments,” Mr Sanders says.

“By learning how to do these things on the moon and on Mars, there’s a potential spin back to Earth.”

The moon could be ground zero for doing things differently, with excavation potentially beginning within a decade.

The federal government is backing a series of local space innovations, including those that can help address climate change.

Moon to Mars

The Australian Space Agency on Wednesday awarded robotics and artificial intelligence startup Advanced Navigation $5.2 million under the Moon to Mars grant program.

“It represents a pivotal milestone in the company’s trajectory, as we embark to be among the first Australian technologies to reach the moon,” CEO and co-founder Xavier Orr says.

Space Agency head Enrico Palermo says 10 projects will share in close to $40 million under the demonstrator program, which will position local space companies to be part of future space missions.

“These space projects will make a big impact, including to NASA’s Artemis program,” Mr Palermo says.

Artemis is the name of NASA’s program to return astronauts to the lunar surface, as part of a giant leap to take humans to Mars.

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