In-Situ Resource Utilisation test process

A consortium, led by Thales Alenia Space in the UK, has been tasked with producing a small piece of equipment that will evaluate the prospect of building larger lunar plants to extract propellant for spacecraft and breathable air for astronauts – as well as metallic raw materials for equipment. The compact payload will need to extract 50-100 grams of oxygen from lunar regolith - targeting 70% extraction of all available oxygen within the sample – while delivering precision measurements of performance and ánd gas concentations. And it will have to do all this in a hurry, within a 10 day period – running on the solar power available within a single fortnight-long lunar day, before the coming of the pitch-black, freezing lunar night. To do requires a complex set of deeds, overcoming dust from the landing site. The demonstrator will have to land, undergo commissioning, acquire sample material, load it into the demonstrator which then produces oxygen from it.