NASA intends to develop technologies for the exploitation of resources on the moon, which will initially include oxygen and water, and then expand to the extraction of iron and rare ores, in the context of which the American space agency has already taken some steps. to be able to excavate the lunar crust in 2032, a researcher quoted by Reuters announced on Wednesday.

NASA plans to send American astronauts to the moon again as part of its Artemis missions, including the first woman and the first black astronaut, by 2025, and learn from those missions to make the journey to Mars easier.

A key part of lunar missions is the development of commercial opportunities in space. The US agency is trying to quantify potential resources, including energy, water and lunar soil, to attract commercial investment, said Gerald Sanders, a rocket specialist who has worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for 35 years.

According to him, the development of access to resources on the Moon will be important for reducing costs and developing a closed-loop economy.

“We’re trying to invest at the exploration stage to understand the resources (…) to reduce the risk so that foreign investment makes sense and can lead to development and production,” Gerald Sanders said at a space mining conference. , organized in the Australian city of Brisbane.

Later this month, NASA will launch a test drilling rig on the moon and plans to excavate the lunar soil — the so-called regolith — on a larger scale, as well as install a pilot processing plant in 2032.

The first customers could be commercial rocket companies that could use the Moon’s resources to obtain fuel and oxygen.

The Australian Space Agency is involved in the development of a semi-autonomous rover that will take regolith samples as part of a mission that NASA will launch as early as 2026, said Samuel Webster, the Australian agency’s assistant director.

The rover will demonstrate that it is possible to collect lunar soil that contains oxygen in the form of oxides.

Using separate equipment that will be sent to the moon with a semi-autonomous rover, NASA wants to get that oxygen, the Australian official added.

“This is a key step towards establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, as well as supporting future missions to Mars,” he also said at the same press conference (Agepres) (Photo: Dreamstime.com)