WMC 2023 Student Team Hackathon

1. Introduction

The Apollo 17 expedition carried the last group of astronauts to visit the moon in 1972. The USA has plans to send humans back to the moon in 2025 or 2026 using the Artemis 3 rocket and SpaceX’s Starship vehicle (see https://www.space.com/artemis-1-going-back-to-the-moon#section-back-to-the-moon).

One of the reasons for the Artemis mission is to investigate the potential to use the moon as a staging post for further solar expedition. Water, in the form of ice, has been discovered in the polar regions of the moon. This water can be broken down via a process of electrolysis to form Oxygen, necessary to sustain life, and hydrogen, a potential rocket fuel. This would most like be accomplished via a means of In-situ Resources Utlisation (ISRU). This means that material (ice) is processed in-situ and not extracted, transported and processed in a mill as most mines operate on earth.

It may also be necessary to harness other resources on the moon to sustain future lunar bases. Lunar regolith is the layer of loose dust several meters thick that covers the surface of the moon. It consists primarily of binary compounds of oxygen (See Table 1).

Using an energy intensive Fray, Farthing and Chen (FFC) electrolysis process, it may be possible to separate the principal chemical elements from lunar regolith. These elements, plus their potential uses, are listed in Table 2.

Processed regolith also shows substantial promise as a building material, with substantial research by the University of Adelaide into sintering and smelting regolith to produce low cost lunar bricks (see “Lunar construction” paper).

2. Your Challenge

In order to process regolith material on the lunar surface, it must first be mined. Your task is to develop a CONCEPT STUDY as to how you might MINE LUNAR REGOLITH so as to feed a processing plant to either manufacture lunar bricks or extract metals. The scope involved the development of a preferred configuration for your concept design, as well as the enunciation of a plan for deploying your design on the surface of the moon.

3. Scope of Challenge

Your task does NOT include:

1. Designing an exploration system to determine high quality regolith resources in advance of mining.
2. Designing a lunar brick making manufacturing facility OR a Lunar FFC electrolysis process.

This project involves a concept study

4. How will you solve this?

It is very expensive to transport materials to the moon. The price of launching material into space is approximately US$400,000 per kg.

It is suggested that each team adopt a Systems Engineering design approach to developing their concept designs. The “V” systems model is commonly employed to help guide this development (see Cloutier et al, 2015).

This begins by:

1. Identifying all stakeholders (groups having direct interest) in the project. These will include NASA space command, the Department of Treasury (who finance NASA), Designers, Maintainers etc.
2. Stakeholder requirements analysis - What do each stakeholder want regarding the performance of the lunar miner?
3. Use-Case Analysis – Who will use the Lunar miner? How do they want the miner to behave?
4. Systems Requirements – What target values should be used to qualify the stakeholder requirements? e.g. The system should be lightweight, could translate to “the system needs to weigh no less than 100 kg” It is desirable to number each of the system requirements, using a code for the stakeholder and a number for each requirement (e.g. NASA-001)

One your team has settled on s detailed list of systems requirements, it is time to move onto what is know as the “solutions space”.

This begin by breaking the system down into a series of sub-systems, each of which are necessary for the performance of the whole system. For example, the Lunar Miner will require a:

• Structural frame
• Power system
• Propulsion system
• Traction system (wheels, tracks, legs etc.)
• Steering system
• Digging system
• Material transport system
• Two-way communications system (receives and transmit)
• Control system
• etc.

Several design options exist for each of these subsystems. Your team needs to carefully consider how well each option meets the systems requirements. This is best down by constructing a series of comparison tables, where you can discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of each design alternative.

Your “preferred configuration” is defined as the set of preferred design solutions. Then, and only then, it is time to develop a drawing of your preferred configuration. You may use a simple design software packages such as “Innovate” or “AutoCAD” to draw your solutions. Alternatively you can provide a photograph of a simply sketch showing what the solution might look like, or even build a prototype using Lego™, for example!

This is the point that satisfies one of the deliverables of the challenge. In addition to your completed concept design, your team should prepare a Risk and Opportunity management plan related to the feasibility of translating your concept design to a successful Lunar miner. What are the things that your team is still a little unclear about, or that require some ongoing testing? These represent potential design risks to your concept design. What are the potential advantages of your design? Are there additional tasks that your Lunar Miner design can perform with relatively little further investment? These are opportunities associated with your concept design.

The other elements of the V systems design model deal with the progression of the concept design through to component design (including specification of materials) then to manufacture, sub-system assembly and verification of design tolerances, surface roughness etc.

The subsystems will then be integrated and a series of functional tests performed to verify that the systems requirements are satisfied. Finally, the completed system will be commissioned and tested against the user requirements. The Lunar Miner will be tested on earth, first, before it is transported into space! This process is called “system validation”.

5. The Deliverable

Each team should prepare a presentation in which they outline the merits of their concept study. The presentation can include PowerPoint slides and/or video animations.

• Stakeholder identification and needs
• System specifications
• System architecture
• A sample of solution space
• The preferred concept
• The calculated mass of the preferred concept
• A deployment plan for the concept on the surface of the moon
• A risk/opportunity analysis

6. Forming a Team

Teams can be composed of between 4 and 6 students.

If you register as an individual student, you will be allocated to a virtual team

7. Registering your team

Click here to register

8. Judging criteria

Teams should elect one person to present their concept designs. That person cannot answer questions. All questions must be deferred to other members of the team to answer.

The presentations will be judged in accordance to the marking rubric illustrated in Table 3 (see Annex A). Five eminent professionals will mark the presentations. The winning team will be decided via the average mark given by these five professionals.

9. References

Cloutier, R., Baldwin, C., and Bone, M.A., “Systems Engineering Simplified”, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2015

Lunar Construction – Novel Materials Production. 2022. url: https://set.adelaide.edu.au/atcsr/lunar-construction-novel-materials-production.

NASA Systems Engineering Handbook

Papike, J.J., Simon S.B.,, and Laul J.C.. “The lunar regolith: Chemistry, mineralogy, and petrology”. In: Reviews of Geophysics 20.4 (1982), pp. 761–826. doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/RG020i004p00761. eprint: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/RG020i004p00761.

Shaw, M. et al. “Mineral Processing and Metal Extraction on the Lunar Surface - Challenges and Opportunities”. In: Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review 43.7 (2022), pp. 865–891. doi: 10 . 1080 / 08827508 . 2021 . 1969390. eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/08827508.2021.1969390.

Simon, S.B., Papike J.J., and Laul, J.C. “The lunar regolith: comparative studies of the Apollo and Luna sites. Petrology of soils from Apollo 17, Luna 16, 20, and 24.” In: Lunar and Planetary Science Conference Proceedings 12 (Jan. 1982), pp. 371–388.