NASA is studying a multi-role robotic lunar lander able to put an automated mine on the Moon to aid human settlement. The first version would likely go to the permanently sunlit area of Shackleton crater at the Moon's South Pole to confirm the probable location of the first human outpost. Eventually, many of these landers would deploy a range of machines that would prove the concept of in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU).
"[The robots] locate, excavate, extract, transport, process, store and perform waste disposal. This is a mine," says NASA lunar precursor robotic programme deputy programme executive David Atkinson, speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics aerospace sciences meeting in Reno, Nevada earlier this month.
If successful, by 2023 NASA could begin to supplement outpost resources with local materials from the robot mine, Atkinson says. As well as minerals and metals such as aluminium and titanium, studies suggest the Moon's soil, or regolith, could supply abundant oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen.
The first laboratory tests of robotic regolith processing hardware are planned for the second quarter.