NIAC 2021 - Ablative Arc Mini In-situ Resource Utilization

 Amelia Grieg U of Texas

Notes by Paul Fischer

Ablative Arc Mini in-situ resource utilization

Using controlled lightening bolts to mine the moon

Two options

Take everything with us

Or find ways to use things there

Propellants, oxygen, and silicon available on the moon

Lunar regolith is composed of many elements and lunar water ice frozen into various points on the moon

North and south lunar poles

Many challenges

Water found in areas permanently shadowed near the lunar pole

No option for high flow rates, and large losses through natural diffusion prices

Very fine and electrostatic lunar dust

The oblique arc mining approach begins with an electric arc and the electrons in the arc will come off in charged form meaning the regolith can be transported with no mining parts

Electric fields minimize losses from natural diffusion and no reliance

Focusing ion optics…

Moving equal velocity is important for the next step, and the beams will pass through a magnetic field through a permanent magnet

The particles will then be placed in a dedicated collection reservoir in direct path of the elements while metals and other solid materials will be placed on a collection plate

Entire system contained in a single skewer crawler

12 electrodes will be placed on the ring in the front

A circular region in front of the ring would be ready for collection and sorting

The arcs no longer reach the surface and begins arcing again

Single arc 1Hz can mine 131 kg per year, while estimates of a full scale mining system would require fore crawlers with 10 metric tons

The axis robotic arm would be the only moving parts other than mobility

Q: how to deal with charged dust particles in the electrostatic?

A: not as bad as much of the lunar dust and the crawler and collection system most will be drawn into the same … looking at a collection reservoir for dust, and the heavy dust particles. Other work has seen the regultih to be used for building materials

Q: how to deal with erosion of the arc electrodes?

A: in the video multiple sets and expansion of the erosion material, the collection materials were also … snap the electrode ring into place and use the same bulk vehicle

Q: how to deal with the oxygen produced?

A: oxygen has not been looked at yet, it is too much on top of everything else, looking at ablation and transport side of things, cryogenic collection of water vapor

Q: Would the process benefit from some sort of ideal feedstock? Are some soils or regolith more suitable for this method than others? 

A: at this moment only a few regolith lunar simulates are available, the highland simulates are better for this particular system, which is all that we have used so far. Different regoliths and see if there are any differences there

Q; by what means would this be able to test the type quantity and charge?

A: the total mass that is ablated, and then a residual gas analyzer works very similarly to the general …. This gives us the relative ratios of the simulates, we also have a spectrometer set up and the products that are being set up as being transported through the chamber, with the three combined we get a good representation of what the arcs are

Q: once sorted, is the material charged first? Maintain the charge of the particles or not?

A: there is no reason to keep the particles in the charged form, that would be collection of the gas

Q: updated numbers as more tests are taken, power vs. how much you are going to be able to mine?

A: that is one of the biggest questions to answer in phase one, the values are still approximations, based on plasma thruster technology, to produce thrust instead of sorting it, slightly bigger for the full scale system, and there is no data on that, but once experimental results are sorted then the results can be updated to be more certain

Q: have you considered applications for the mars surface?

A: slightly higher formation would be easier to apply on mars than the moon even

NIAC 2021 - Regolith Adaptive Modification Systems (RAMS)

 Experiment Station

Sarbajit Banerjee, PhD

Davidson Chair Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry

Notes by Paul Fischer

Regulith adaptive modification systems

Tame the regolith so it does not go flying into plumes on spacecraft

Build up the infrastructure on planetary bodies

Chemistry to make steel and advanced alloys with rgulith along with load bearing dense silicate structures

Microcapsule technologies to position these chemistries at any location

What we had dreamed up in any measure

Hard weight-bearing structures

Delivered thought microcapsules released payload upon impact

Changing infrastructure and how it is built on planetary bodies

Exothermic thermite reactions

Heat thermic reactions

Companion and termal sintering

Make use of source materials for use in the construction of various structures

Built of small razor sharp particles

Pyroxenes iron nickel etc used to make the alloys

Abundant in certain areas across the lunar surface, mapped

The lunar regulith can be combusted using nano molecules

By transitioning magnesium particles and can be brought to the surface to form magnesium oxide as a by product

Thermite reactions can be made and in essence to be burning metal in a small scale thermal reaction against magnesium

Metal oxide provides its own source of oxygen, the light weight and relative reactivity results in a solid chunk of solid regolith possibly accounting for the small strings and the lunar regolith, illmunite could be useful for carrying out thermite to that carries out high strength alloys

A subsurface structure can be performed

As the microcapsules rupture, a series of chemical matrices can be created

Three different precursors have been allowed to fully homogenize and rapidly solidify the mixture Ito a single material and can be pressed into 3d printers or used

Careful preparation of the regolith, microcapsule jetting can be useful for precursor delivery

The custom micro encapsulation system can be velocity dependent delivery and they can be ruptrred and deposited deeper in the precursors

The initial exothermic reaction can be …

Consolidation can be achieved with high strength alloy on top or by creation of slabs

Q: mgO is a common by-product, are there any uses for that?

A: yes you can set up a cycle to recapture the mg again, and this is a resource we will b e able to recover or use for this chemistry, this is something that has been used in parallel, and deal with electro deposition and mg precursors can be made in some sort of an environment with precisely modulated geometries through the thermite reactions

Q: what range of depth would be used for the laser to ignite the reaction?

A: the laser is one method, also with fuel or shock methods. Depending on how deep you want it to go, we have looked at simulated regolith and depending on projection velocity with which we project the microsimulants into the …

Q: wil the thermite reactions react in the same ways?

A: on other planetary bodies and other pesky issues that we have here, but going to space is the way to take this research further. Remember the oxygen is coming form the regulith itself. A fair degree of control over the microstructure and an example of the microstructure itself

Q: findings on thermite?

A: one of the reasons to use this approach, we have worked for years on micro encapsulation which are being loaded by the train carload, and the purpose is to use thermite chemistry in. A safe way, that is the type of microstructure that we want and has the weight bearing properties that we are looking for

Q: martian material sources and how can you know what to look at and where to land?

A: We worked with primarily lunar simulates and we have been very successful with al and ni found, we have had success looking at other types of 

Q: can the released oxygen be used to make thermite?

A: exactly the right way to think about it, using solar power to do electrolysis, and a lead compound…