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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

Geotechnical Tests on Asteroid Simulant Orgueil

In the last 100 years, the global population has more than quadrupled to over seven billion people. At the same time, the demand for food and standard of living has been increasing which has amplified the global water use by nearly eight times from approximately 500 to 4000 cu km per yr from 1900 to 2010. With the increasing concern to sustain the growing population on Earth it is necessary to seek other approaches to ensure that our planet will have resources for generations to come. In recent years, the advancement of space travel and technology has allowed the idea of mining asteroids with resources closer to becoming a reality. During the duration of the internship at NASA Kennedy Space Center, several geotechnical tests were conducted on BP-1 lunar simulant and asteroid simulant Orgueil. The tests that were conducted on BP-1 was to practice utilizing the equipment that will be used on the asteroid simulant and the data from those tests will be omitted from report. Understanding the soil mechanics of asteroid simulant Orgueil will help provide basis for future technological advances and prepare scientists for the conditions they may encounter when mining asteroids becomes reality in the distant future. Distinct tests were conducted to determine grain size distribution, unconsolidated density, and maximum density. Once the basic properties are known, the asteroid simulant will be altered to different levels of compaction using a vibrator table to see how compaction affects the density. After different intervals of vibration compaction, a miniature vane shear test will be conducted. Laboratory vane shear testing is a reliable tool to investigate strength anisotropy in the vertical and horizontal directions of a very soft to stiff saturated fine-grained clayey soil. This test will provide us with a rapid determination of the shear strength on the undisturbed compacted regolith. The results of these tests will shed light on how much torque is necessary to drill through the surface of an asteroid. Most of the known asteroids are believed to be left over material during the formation of the solar system that never accreted to form planets. Asteroids can be found in several groups such as Trojan Asteroids, Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and the main asteroid belt. The Trojan Asteroids orbit the 4th and 5th Lagrange points of major planets in the Solar System while the NEA's have orbits that are close to and sometimes intersect with Earths orbit and the Main Asteroid Belt which is found between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. Gravitational perturbations can alter the orbit of asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt causing them to move closer to earth causing them to become in the NEA class.

resources↗
NASA NTRS1994

Mining the air: How far have we progressed?

A brief discussion of oxygen-extraction technology and equipment developed by the Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) is presented. Lunar and martian oxygen production from in situ materials and the development of oxygen factories are covered briefly.

Ramohalli, Kumar↗
NASA NTRS1989

Transportation and operations aspects of space energy systems

A brief comparative analysis was made for three concepts of supplying large-scale electrical energy to Earth from space. The concepts were: (1) mining helium-3 on the Moon and returning it to Earth; (2) constructing solar power satellites in geosynchronous orbit from lunar materials (the energy is beamed by microwave to receivers on Earth); and (3) constructing power collection and beaming systems on the Moon itself and transmitting the energy to Earth by microwave. This analysis concerned mainly space transportation and operations, but each of the systems is briefly characterized to provide a basis for space transportation and operations analysis.

Woodcock, Gordon R.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Lightweight Bulldozer Attachment for Construction and Excavation on the Lunar Surface

A lightweight bulldozer blade prototype has been designed and built to be used as an excavation implement in conjunction with the NASA Chariot lunar mobility platform prototype. The combined system was then used in a variety of field tests in order to characterize structural loads, excavation performance and learn about the operational behavior of lunar excavation in geotechnical lunar simulants. The purpose of this effort was to evaluate the feasibility of lunar excavation for site preparation at a planned NASA lunar outpost. Once the feasibility has been determined then the technology will become available as a candidate element in the NASA Lunar Surface Systems Architecture. In addition to NASA experimental testing of the LANCE blade, NASA engineers completed analytical work on the expected draft forces using classical soil mechanics methods. The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) team utilized finite element analysis (FEA) to study the interaction between the cutting edge of the LANCE blade and the surface of soil. FEA was also used to examine various load cases and their effect on the lightweight structure of the LANCE blade. Overall it has been determined that a lunar bulldozer blade is a viable technology for lunar outpost site preparation, but further work is required to characterize the behavior in 1/6th G and actual lunar regolith in a vacuum lunar environment.

Mueller, Robert↗
NASA NTRS2013

Manufacture of Lunar Regolith Simulants

The manufacture of lunar regolith simulants can use many technologies unfamiliar to the aerospace industry. Many of these technologies are extensively used in the mining industry. Rock crushing, grinding, process control as a function of particle size, as well as other essential concepts are explained here. Notes are provided on special considerations necessary, given the unusual nature of the desired final product. For example, wet grinding, which is an industry norm, can alter the behavior of simulant materials. As the geologic materials used for simulants can contain minerals such as quartz and pyrite, guidance is provided regarding concepts, risks, measurement, and handling. Extractive metallurgy can be used to produce high-grade components for subsequent manufacture, reducing the compromises inherent in using just rock. Several of the components needed in simulants such as glasses, agglutinates, and breccias are simply not available or not reasonably matched by existing terrestrial resources. Therefore, techniques to produce these in useful quantities were developed and used. Included in this list is the synthesis of specific minerals. The manufacture of two simulants, NU-LHT-1M and NU-LHT-2M, is covered in detail.

D.L. Rickman↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Recent Discoveries in Simulant Behavior and Regolith Handling

The past few years have seen an exciting increase in visibility for the use of in-situ resources to achieve sustainability at the Moon and Mars. This visibility and inclusion in the mission architectures has led to an explosion in the research and development of mining and processing of regolith at the Moon. However, there are still many fundamental issues regarding digging, transporting, and processing of lunar and Mars regolith that may slow the progress by multiple teams who need to understand these issues before proceeding with hardware development. The objective of this project is to utilize the same team of soil and thermal experts and unique facilities to allow for efficient and fast generation of fundamental data and dissemination of critical results to the larger community. The capability gaps being addressed include how to dig up hard, frozen resources, transport to the processing site, lifting/depositing into a hopper or reactor, and extracting the water, all without losing the primary product to the environment. Soil Seals: Much attention has been focused on the challenges with regolith inlet/outlet valves that must seal in process gases after being repeatedly ex-posed to abrasive regolith and dust particles. One possible solution that has been proposed is to design the inlet hopper or duct such that the bulk of regolith pro-vides sufficient sealing of the reactor. Tests are planned to parametrically measure the maximum del-ta-pressure that can be maintained across a column of soil before ‘blow-out’ occurs. Variables to be examined include column height and width, simulant type, and compaction.

Simulant↗
NASA NTRS2010

Polar Lunar Regions: Exploiting Natural and Augmented Thermal Environments

In the polar regions of the Moon, some areas within craters are permanently shadowed from solar illumination and can drop to temperatures of 100 K or lower. These sites may serve as cold traps, capturing ice and other volatile compounds, possibly for eons. Interestingly, ice stored in these locations could potentially alter how lunar exploration is conducted. Within craters inside craters (double-shaded craters) that are shaded from thermal re-radiation and from solar illuminated regions, even colder regions should exist and, in many cases, temperatures in these regions never exceed 50 K. Working in these harsh environments with existing conventional systems, exploration or mining activities could be quite daunting and challenging. However, if the unique characteristics of these environments were exploited, the power, weight, and total mass that is required to be carried from the Earth to the Moon for lunar exploration and research would be substantially reduced. In theory, by minimizing the heat transfer between an object and the lunar surface, temperatures near absolute zero can be produced. In a single or double-shaded crater, if the object was isolated from the variety of thermal sources and was allowed to radiatively cool to space, the achievable temperature would be limited by the 3 K cosmic background and the anomalous solar wind that can strike the object being cooled. Our analysis shows that under many circumstances, with some simple thermal radiation shielding, it is possible to establish environments with temperatures of several degrees Kelvin.

Brannon, David↗
NASA NTRS1990

Lunar surface vehicle evolution - FY89-90 NASA studies

A return to the moon in the first decade of the next century, as called for by President Bush in his July 20, 1989 speech, will challenge the talents of the engineers and designers faced for the first time with the task of designing elements and systems for a 'permanent' extraterrestrial outpost. The set of surface vehicles for such a permanent outpost will require not only rovers for crew and science package transport, but autonomous rovers for site surveying and remote science, construction vehicles for outpost set-up and mining vehicles for using the resources of the moon to benefit the outpost. Studies conducted in FY 1989, including those supporting NASA's 90-day Study activity, and others continuing throughout FY 1990 are defining the lunar surface vehicle set in increasing detail. This paper describes recent work performed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Johnson Space Center, as well as by other supporting NASA installations in the definition of the lunar vehicle set. Classification of vehicle functions and mission requirements are first examined, and vehicle characteristics and reference designs are synthesized. The paper concludes with a discussion of current work and future goals.

Connolly, John F.↗
NASA NTRS1991

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU): Surface systems program area of the exploration technology program

The topics presented are covered in viewgraph form and include the following: (1) utilization of Lunar and Mars resources; (2) oxygen - an example of cost savings; (3) In Space Resource Utilization (ISRU); (4) basic resource processing methods; (5) planetary mining; (6) raw materials preparation; (7) validation, testbeds, and flight experiments; (8) mission readiness schedule; and (9) ISRU budget guideline.

Mckay, David S.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Low-Latency Lunar Surface Telerobotics from Earth-Moon Libration Points

Concepts for a long-duration habitat at Earth-Moon LI or L2 have been advanced for a number of purposes. We propose here that such a facility could also have an important role for low-latency telerobotic control of lunar surface equipment, both for lunar science and development. With distances of about 60,000 km from the lunar surface, such sites offer light-time limited two-way control latencies of order 400 ms, making telerobotic control for those sites close to real time as perceived by a human operator. We point out that even for transcontinental teleoperated surgical procedures, which require operational precision and highly dexterous manipulation, control latencies of this order are considered adequate. Terrestrial telerobots that are used routinely for mining and manufacturing also involve control latencies of order several hundred milliseconds. For this reason, an Earth-Moon LI or L2 control node could build on the technology and experience base of commercially proven terrestrial ventures. A lunar libration-point telerobotic node could demonstrate exploration strategies that would eventually be used on Mars, and many other less hospitable destinations in the solar system. Libration-point telepresence for the Moon contrasts with lunar telerobotic control from the Earth, for which two-way control latencies are at least six times longer. For control latencies that long, telerobotic control efforts are of the "move-and-wait" variety, which is cognitively inferior to near real-time control.

Lester, Daniel↗
NASA NTRS1990

Integrated lunar materials manufacturing process

A manufacturing plant and process for production of oxygen on the moon uses lunar minerals as feed and a minimum of earth-imported, process materials. Lunar feed stocks are hydrogen-reducible minerals, ilmenite and lunar agglutinates occurring in numerous, explored locations mixed with other minerals in the pulverized surface layer of lunar soil known as regolith. Ilmenite (FeTiO.sub.3) and agglutinates contain ferrous (Fe.sup.+2) iron reducible by hydrogen to yield H.sub.2 O and metallic Fe at about 700.degree.-1,200.degree. C. The H.sub.2 O is electrolyzed in gas phase to yield H.sub.2 for recycle and O.sub.2 for storage and use. Hydrogen losses to lunar vacuum are minimized, with no net hydrogen (or any other earth-derived reagent) consumption except for small leaks. Feed minerals are surface-mined by front shovels and transported in trucks to the processing area. The machines are manned or robotic. Ilmenite and agglutinates occur mixed with silicate minerals which are not hydrogen-reducible at 700.degree.-1,200.degree. C. and consequently are separated and concentrated before feeding to the oxygen generation process. Solids rejected from the separation step and reduced solids from the oxygen process are returned to the mine area. The plant is powered by nuclear or solar power generators. Vapor-phase water electrolysis, a staged, countercurrent, fluidized bed reduction reactor and a radio-frequency-driven ceramic gas heater are used to improve thermal efficiency.

Gibson, Michael A.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Temporary Atmospheres Produced By Human Activities on the Moon

Outgassing from materials, whether through the ascent/descent stages of lunar vehicles, airlock depressurizing, rover or astronaut suit outgassing, may cause an effect of unwanted accumulation of volatiles at the surface and exosphere. This is especially important at (or proximal) to permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar poles. Herein, we provide estimates of expected outgassing from various human-landed objects on the Moon, including backpacks, airlocks, rovers, landers, trash and mining operations. Astronaut suits produce some level of oxygen outgassing (Helou et al., 2022), which may transport and condense in these PSRs, even in micro- cold traps (Glavin et al., 2010).We estimate the outgassing from drill mining and trash-to-gas conversion assuming a specific technology is operating. These outgassing systems can create local, temporary atmospheres in the vicinity (∼100 km radius) of the sources. The atmosphere may be particularly high within meters of the source. To obtain column densities for these temporary atmospheres, we first bracket ranges for the gas number loss as a function of time. We then derive the maximum distance traveled and the time the released molecules remain in the exosphere for a single ballistic hop, assuming the molecules are ejected from the surface of the object at its surface temperature. In some cases, such as the astronaut backpack and the rover, the temperature is that of the source. Given this information, an average and peak local exospheric density and column density can be estimated. We find that backpacks, airlock releases, and the Starship lander can create relatively high-density local atmospheres, with local near-lander outgassing water densities exceeding 107/cm3. This local water exosphere is over 106 times greater than the LADEE-derived lower limit of the natural water exosphere at ∼3/cm3. Thus, the anthropogenic temporary water exosphere will likely dominate the environment near the lander, making an assessment of the natural exospheric water environment difficult.

Rosemary M Killen↗
NASA NTRS2018

An Affordable Lunar Architecture Emphasizing Commercial and International Partnering Opportunities

Since the cancellation of the Constellation Program, NASA officially has been focused on Mars as the next step for human exploration. Yet many in the space community believe that returning humans to the moon is more logical. Often-cited reasons for this include: (1) should Nature prove to be favorable, the moon could be the basis for expanding the space economy through Off-Earth Mining (OEM) and other commercial endeavors; (2) the moon is scientifically interesting and could serve as a platform for scientific facilities; and (3) useful experience could be gained there for the human journey to Mars. With this in mind, JPL’s A-Team (Architecture Team) was tasked with developing conceptual lunar surface architectures that could simultaneously provide “living on another world” proving ground experience, but would also be affordable and offer truly significant commercial and international partnering opportunities. The task also required that the resulting architectures must eventually lead to and flow seamlessly into planning for human missions to Mars in the 2030s/2040s, if “things go well.” This aspect has been critically missing in other lunar architecture proposals.

Elliott, John↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Life in Space: Data Sharing and Tools for Knowledge Discovery

The fast-growing array of space biological data, which in the past was simply archived after minimal analysis, holds great potential if it can be reorganized and formatted for Open Science. Organizing the data for such analysis is a challenge because of its diverse nature (molecular, cellular, tissue, whole organism, behavior; tabular, imagery). Open Science is the concept that the more people have access to scientifically curated data, the more knowledge will be gained. This led NASA to start the development of GeneLab in 2015. GeneLab houses spaceflight and space-analog multi-omics datasets from plant, rodent, small animal, and microbial experiments. The success and knowledge gained from GeneLab led to a new alliance of NASA “Open Science Data Repositories” (OSDR), which include the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) and the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC). Both are adopting the GeneLab data system, so data are more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). OSDR systems provide users the ability to upload, download, search, share, analyze, and visualize. Open Science also needs strong confidence in the data, which is gained through building science communities. With ~400 current members, GeneLab and ALSDA formed Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) to provide feedback on processing pipelines, metadata curation standards (for ‘omics and phenotypic-physiological-behavioral assays), and to collaborate in effectively reusing data. The AWG also led to the development of the Radiation Biology Ontology (RBO), ensuring radiation metadata are efficiently captured, connected, and interoperable. Feedback from the AWG provided design input toward the new single point-of-entry data submission portal for all investigators to submit, curate, and share their research data. Space biological data is now maximally open access, collected-curated with rich metadata, and formatted for interoperability to enable systems biology, meta-analysis, knowledge graphs, machine learning, modeling, and other reuse approaches. With potential for further federation of OSDR for data mining with traditional biological and medical databases (NIH, NCI, EBI, etc.), a new era for space biology has begun to support the knowledge discovery necessary for Lunar and Martian missions.

Ryan T Scott↗
NASA NTRS2009

Providing Oxygen for the Crew of a Lunar Outpost

Oxygen (O2) is obviously essential for human space missions, but it is important to examine all the different ways it will be used and the potential sources that it may come from. This effort will lead to storage and delivery requirements and help to determine the optimum architecture from an overall systems engineering point of view. Accounting for all the oxygen in a Lunar Outpost mission includes meeting the metabolic needs of the crew while in the surface Habitat, leakage through the Habitat or Pressurized Rover walls, recharge of the space suit backpack and emergency situations. Current plans indicate that both primary and secondary O2 bottles for the space suit will be filled to a pressure of 20.7 MPa (3000 psia). Other uses of O2 require much lower pressure. Sources of O2 at a Lunar Outpost include compressed or liquefied O2 brought along specifically for life support, scavenged O2 from the Lander propulsion system, recovered O2 from waste water or exhaled carbon dioxide and O2 mined from the moon itself. Previously, eight technology options were investigated to provide the high pressure space suit O2. High pressure O2 storage was treated as the baseline technology and compared to the other seven. The other seven were cryogenic storage followed by high pressure vaporization, scavenging liquid oxygen (LOX) from Lander followed by vaporization, LOX delivery followed by sorption compression, low pressure water electrolysis followed by mechanical compression, high pressure water electrolysis, sharing a high pressure electrolyzer with a regenerative fuel cell power system, and making use of In- Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). This system-level analysis was conducted by comparing equivalent system mass of the eight technologies in open and closed loop life support architectures. The most promising high pressure O2 generation technologies were recommended for development. Updates and an expansion of the earlier study have been made and the results are reported in this paper. Examples of recent analyses include feasibility of recovering space suit purge O2 in a Pressurized Rover and using sub-critical LOX for primary supply while using high-pressure gaseous O2 as the secondary supply for the space-suit. Preliminary analysis on scavenging LOX from the Lander and delivering it to the Habitat has also been incorporated into this integrated lunar fluids analysis

Ewert, Michael K.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Telerobotic Excavator Designed to Compete in NASA's Lunabotics Mining Competition

The second annual NASA Lunabotics Mining competition is to be held in May 23-28, 2011. The goal of the competition is for teams of university level students to design, build, test and compete with a fully integrated lunar excavator on a simulated lunar surface. Our team, named Lunar Solutions I, will be representing Temple University's College of Engineering in the competition. The team's main goal was to build a robot which is able to compete with other teams, and ultimately win the competition. The main challenge of the competition was to build a wireless robot that can excavate and collect a minimum of 10 kilograms of the regolith material within 15 minutes. The robot must also be designed to operate in conditions similar to those found on the lunar surface. The design of the lunar excavator is constrained by a set of requirements determined by NASA and detailed in the competition's rulebook. The excavator must have the ability to communicate with the "main base" wirelessly, and over a Wi-Fi network. Human operators are located at a remote site approximately 60 meters away from the simulated lunar surface upon which the robot must excavate the lunar regolith surface. During the competition, the robot will operate in a separate area from the control room in an area referred to as the "Lunarena." From the control room, the operators will have to control the robot using visual feedback from cameras placed both within the arena and on the robot. Using this visual feedback the human operators control the robots movement using both keyboard and joystick commands. In order to place in the competition, a minimum of 10 kg of regolith material has to be excavated, collected, and dumped into a specific location. For that reason, the robot must be provided with an effective and powerful excavation system. Our excavator uses tracks for the drive system. After performing extensive research and trade studies, we concluded that tracks would be the most effective method for transporting the excavator. When designing the excavation system, we analyzed several design options from the previous year's competition. We decided to use a front loader to collect the material, rather than a conveyer belt system or auger. Many of the designs from last year's competition used a conveyer belt mechanism to mine regolith and dump it into a temporary storage bin place on the robot. Using the front end loader approach allowed us to combine the scooping system and storage unit, which meant that the excavation system required less space.

Nash, Rodney↗