High-Level Project Summary
The project is the 3D representation of three future technologies to extract, move and localize lunar resources. The project educates the public about how the activity of mining local resources on the Moon will be performed and highlight its importance for a sustainable space exploration.Water, vital for life and agriculture and convertible into rocket fuel, can be extracted from lunar regolith. Moreover, the regolith can be turned into basalt for construction purposes by a simple process of heating and cooling. These resources would be otherwise sent from Earth with expensive rocket launches. Regolith also hides precious materials such as rare metals and Helium-3.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
In the next decade, humanity will go back to the Moon, to stay. However, sustainable missions to the Moon require the exploitation of local resources: while reusable rockets have lowered the cost of sending payload to space, extracting water and construction materials from lunar regolith will be fundamental for a quicker and cheaper development of a moonbase. Moreover, the Moon's soil is rich with rare metals useble in electronics, and with Helium-3, an isotope of helium that could fuel future nuclear fusion power plants.
For these reasons we want to educate the public about some of the ways we could localize, mine and transport lunar resources.
We have recreated 3D models of a lunar excavator and of a rover, ATHLETE, currently in development by NASA.
These teleoperated machines could perform the tasks of mining the lunar resources and transporting them to processing sites.
We used SolidWorks for producing the 3D models. JavaScript, HTML and CSS were used to create and design the website.
Here is the link to our repository containing the website's script and our models: https://github.com/FedericoTedeschi/SpartansOfTheGalaxy
Space Agency Data
The inspiration for this project comes from the Lunar Nautic Guide by NASA, where the possibility of mining and manufacturing on the Moon is explored.
Sources like "The Lunar Goldrush: How Moon Mining Could Work", "Review of Extra-Terrestrial Regolith Excavation Concepts and Prototypes", and JPL robotics-dedicated web pages were used to look for under-development prototypes for moon mining and payload transportation on the Moon.
Hackathon Journey
Our Space Apps experience has been challenging but inspiring and mind opening. We experienced many unforeseen difficulties that ultimately pushed us beyond our limits to do and learn more.
Virtual Planetary Experience 2.0 has been identified by us as one of the most interesting and tough challenges, but also one where everyone in the team could use his very own skills to contribute to the project, as we are two MSc Aerospace Engineering students and two BSc Computer science students. We want to learn, create, and educate a wider audience to the wonders and possibilities of space exploration.
Our approach was to quickly organize our work by dividing our tasks into two categories: web development and mechanical design. We later defined lower level tasks to be executed.
Setbacks and challenges were faced with short brainstorming sessions to look for a solution. If one was not found, we had the opportunity to ask for help to the mentors of Brescia's location. For these reasons we would like to thank them for the organization and support of the event.
We are the Spartans of the Galaxy:
- Davide: Team Leader, Concept developer, CAD designer
- Mario: Software developer and web designer
- Federico: Software developer and web designer
- Maradon: Concept developer
References
Mueller R.P., Schuler J.M., Lunar ISRU 2019: Review of Extra-Terrestrial Regolith Excavation Concepts and Prototypes, https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lunarisru2019/presentations/5066_Mueller.pdf
The Lunar Goldrush: How Moon Mining Could Work https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/original_images/infographicsuploadsinfographicsfull11272.jpg
NASA, Lunar Nautics: Designing a Mission to Live and Work on the Moon https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/200173main_Lunar_Nautics_Guide.pdf
G.H. Just, K. Smith, K.H. Joy, M.J. Roy, Parametric review of existing regolith excavation techniques for lunar In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) and recommendations for future excavation experiments, Planetary and Space Science, Volume 180, 2020, 104746, ISSN 0032-0633,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2019.104746.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003206331930162X)
The ATHLETE Rover https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/systems/system.cfm?System=11
Tags
#hardware #education #Artemis #moon #exploration #sustainability #human-exploration
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.