Ablative Arc Mining for In Situ Resource Utilization
Publication: Earth and Space 2022
ABSTRACT
As space exploration expands to include human expeditions to the surfaces of other planetary bodies, sustainable in situ resource utilization (ISRU) infrastructures to harvest local resources for water, building materials, and propellants must be developed. Water is the most critical component in the near-term and is therefore the focus of many studies. However, being able to extract other resources with the same system will have long-term flow-on benefits. Ablating surface material using electric arcs creates free ionized particles that can be sorted by mass into material groups and transported to a relevant collector by electromagnetic fields. Collectors specific to each material type are used in parallel to enable maximum collection efficiencies and storage conditions for retention. The ionizing ablation arc, electromagnetic transport and sorting, and collector modules are housed within a mobile surface crawler, potentially leading to diverse and efficient ISRU for human space exploration.
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Earth and Space 2022
Pages: 243 - 254
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Published online: Jan 5, 2023
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