Moon Mining Could Begin As Early As 2025

Moon Mining Could Begin As Early As 2025

Plans to start mining the Moon as early as 2025 became more attractive this week after a US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) team found evidence that the Earth’s natural satellite may, underneath its surface, be richer in metals than previously thought. Using data from the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a team of researchers came to the conclusion that the lunar subsurface contains a higher concentration of certain metals, such as iron and titanium, than estimated.

The study, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, contends the most popular theory surrounding the Moon’s origins. The hypothesis contends the satellite was formed when a Mars-sized object collided with Earth, vaporizing large portions of the Earth’s upper crust.

“By improving our understanding of how much metal the moon’s subsurface actually has, scientists can constrain the ambiguities about how it has formed, how it is evolving and how it is contributing to maintaining habitability on Earth,” lead study author Essam Heggy said in a statement.

The evidence was discovered while the scientists were looking for ice at the bottom of craters in the lunar north pole region, NASA said. It means that fine dust found at the base of those holes are  parts of the deeper layers of the Moon, ejected during meteor impacts. As such, this dust represents the composition in deeper Moon layers

The researchers found a pattern in which larger and deeper craters have higher metal concentrations than smaller and shallower ones. Specifically, in craters approximately 1 to 3 miles wide, the dielectric constant or electrical property increased along with crater size. However, the electrical property remained constant for craters between three to 12 miles wide.

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NASA Selects Intuitive Machines to Deliver Lunar Ice Drill in 2022

Houston – NASA has selected Intuitive Machines to deliver the Polar Resources Ice Mining
Experiment (PRIME-1) drill, combined with a mass spectrometer, to the Moon by
December 2022. The ice drilling mission is the Houston-based company’s second Moon
contract award under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
“Laying the foundation to return humans to the Moon is an incredible honor and even
greater challenge,” said Steve Altemus, President and CEO of Intuitive Machines. “At Intuitive Machines, we’re hungry for the pursuit of these audacious missions that will redefine what a small business is capable of.”

Intuitive Machines, a leading provider and supplier of space products and services, will deliver the approximately 88-pound payload to the Moon’s South Pole as a precursor to the TRIDENT drill and the MSOLO that will fly on VIPER, a mobile robot that will search for water and ice at the Moon’s South Pole.

PRIME-1 will drill into the lunar surface, harvest and bring ice to the Moon’s surface, and use a mass spectrometer to measure how much is lost to sublimination as it turns from solid into vapor in a vacuum. The data from the PRIME-1 mission will help scientists understand how VIPER can search for water  at the Moon’s pole, and how much water may be available to use as NASA plans to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade.

“Establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon requires the success of the CLPS
initiative,” said Altemus. “We have a tremendous responsibility to NASA and opportunity to animate humankind’s pursuit of knowledge through exploration.”

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