Design Investigation of Lunar Water Extraction

• Main Authors: Kiewiet, Luca, Heitkamp, Mart, Kalis, Christoph, Zabel, Paul
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Systemanalyse Raumsegment; South pole
• Online Access: https://elib.dlr.de/196274/; https://elib.dlr.de/196274/1/SRW_2023_Design_Investigation_Water_Extraction.pdf

Water is an essential resource for space exploration, for both robotic and human exploration. It is foreseen that in the future, these resources can be used to produce rocket propellant by electrolyzing water into its components Hydrogen and Oxygen or by astronauts for drinking water and breathable oxygen. This Space Resource Utilisation (SRU) would reduce the cost of spacefaring significantly. Recent discoveries have confirmed the presence of ice at the Lunar south pole. In this work, which is a continuation of the work presented in [1], the design parameters of 4 types of methods for thermal water extraction on the Moon are investigated. These methods are the in-situ surface heating method, the in-situ heated rods method, and the crucible method in different variations, as can be seen in figure 1. The goal is to find the most optimal way to extract water from the lunar surface. Additionally, this poster will present some early results from the EU LUWEX project.