NASA Opens Second Phase of $3.5 Million Lunar Excavation Competition
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (NASA PR) — NASA launched the second phase of its Break the Ice Lunar Challenge to advance technology that is – quite literally – groundbreaking. The challenge invites the public to advance system technology for excavating and delivering lunar resources.
High on NASA’s list of innovation priorities are technologies that use the Moon’s resources to support sustainable surface operations while decreasing supply needs from Earth. This includes systems that could convert lunar ice into rocket fuel, drinkable water, or other vital resources.
“As NASA works to extend human exploration of the solar system, our first stop is a sustained presence on the Moon,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “New technologies and systems like these are essential for us to set a new paradigm for exploration.”
Phase 1 of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge launched in 2020, seeking to incentivize innovative approaches for excavating icy regolith – or Moon dirt – and delivering acquired resources in extreme lunar environmental conditions.
NASA has identified several technology gaps related to harvesting and moving large quantities of resources on the Moon, including hardware capable of operating in the extreme cold and permanent to near-permanent darkness. Robotic systems for excavation will need to withstand the harsh environments inside permanently shadowed regions at the lunar South Pole, the targeted landing site for crewed Artemis missions where ice has been observed.
In Phase 2 of the challenge, teams will be asked to design, build, and test an icy regolith excavation system prototype and an icy regolith transportation system prototype to maximize resource delivery while minimizing energy use and the mass of equipment delivered to the lunar surface. Phase 2 contains three levels, will last for 23 months, and offers a total prize purse of $3 million.
In Phase 2 competition level one, teams will develop detailed engineering designs and long-duration demonstration test plans for their prototype systems. Eligible U.S. teams that meet submission requirements for Phase 2 competition level one will be awarded an equal share of the $500,000 prize purse. All teams that meet the submission requirements for Phase 2 competition level one will advance to Phase 2 competition level two.
In Phase 2 competition level two, teams will build terrestrial analog full-scale prototypes and conduct durability demonstrations. The top-scoring U.S. team will receive $300,000; the second-highest scoring U.S. team will receive $200,000; the third-highest scoring U.S. team will receive $125,000; and up to five U.S. runners-up will receive $75,000each. Up to 15 teams – including winners and runners-up – that exceed the minimum score will advance to Phase 2 competition level three.
In Phase 2 competition level three, teams will test the prototype systems built in Phase 2 competition level two. The top-scoring U.S. team will receive $1 million, and the second-highest scoring U.S. team will receive $500,000. In addition to cash prizes, NASA will also award opportunities to test concepts in a thermal vacuum that will simulate the temperature and atmospheric pressure conditions at the dusty lunar South Pole.
Up to three top-scoring international teams will be recognized as winners in competition level two and competition level three. International teams are not eligible to be awarded prize money or thermal vacuum testing opportunities.
In 2021, NASA awarded 13 teams a share of a $500,000 prize purse for their Phase 1 designs of system architecture for collecting and moving large amounts of icy regolith and water from a permanently shadowed region near the Moon’s South Pole. Teams had seven months to register and submit a detailed system architecture, an excavation plan, and an animation of the system in operation. Thirty-one teams – including academia, industry, and independent inventors from 17 U.S. states, Canada, Australia, and Sri Lanka – submitted eligible proposals.
Phase 1 teams, as well as new competitors, are encouraged to register for Phase 2 on the challenge site by 11:59 p.m. on September 30, 2022.
The Break the Ice Lunar Challenge is a NASA Centennial Challenge, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Centennial Challenges are part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA has contracted Ensemble Consultancy to support the management of competitors for this challenge.
13 responses to “NASA Opens Second Phase of $3.5 Million Lunar Excavation Competition”
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3 billion for spacesuits, 3 million for lunar excavation. I think there’s a priority inversion going on
Yes. Especially as they are not funding the research really needed on explosives that will work safely in the lunar environment and the rock mechanics of the lunar regolith to determine the pattern for the drill holes.
Most lunar rock seems to be basalt. The rock mechanics of terrestrial basalts are well-known. Small-scale experiments with explosives to determine any significant deviations from terrestrial rock mechanics norms could be conducted using one or more of the landers and rovers soon to be emerging from the CLPS pipeline.
Drilling and blasting might prove the best approach for doing open lunar excavations. It would probably be advisable to cover areas being blasted with ballistic cloth tarps to prevent blowing any bits of rock into lunar orbit.
But another approach to excavation, especially for hab space, would be for SpaceX and The Boring Co. to co-develop a lunar-capable TBM that can be divided into lander loads for delivery, then reassembled on the lunar surface.
I agree. Without a way to provide radiation sanctuaries on the surface the suits mean a temporary visit.
In my view NASA is going about this bassackwards: they should build a Moonbase with robots or a “true” shielded space station in lunar orbit before sending astronauts.
I personally prefer the idea of robot landers bringing lunar ice-derived water up to a massive depot in lunar orbit with a crew compartment in the center. This would protect astronauts from cosmic radiation and any solar event, no matter how powerful. This would be the bare minimum without artificial gravity but it would provide what is needed for humans to establish a presence in the vicinity of the Moon. No sanctuary and no such presence is possible. The first significant solar event that doses astronauts would be a disaster.
The other option is to roof over a small crater and top it with regolith using robot excavators. With a “notch” or other entry, astronauts can land close by and go into the crater and inflate structures for habitation.
they should build a Moonbase with robots
Absolutely, but NASA doesn’t have an organization geared for that. All of the existing robotic missions are optimized for science return only.
This would need a completely different approach, fully focused on technology maturation, laying down infrastructure and scaling, and there simply isn’t an organizational paradigm anywhere inside NASA for it.
Jim Bridenstine, the only creature from that administration worth a damn, was ALL about exploiting lunar resources. Perhaps if he had not left there would be a different approach. Perhaps not with rocket jesus influencing all things in favor of his projects. The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.
True. But that may also turn out to be more a feature than a bug. I see no advantage in NASA doing projects related to major infrastructure development on the Moon as it will never have the resources to push that very far. That is properly the job of private enterprise using private capital.
There’s a huge chasm between current state of the art in technology and understanding of the Moon and any sort of private enterprise going and building robotic mining site on the moon.
Just like there are no companies building Tokamak fusion reactors, because the fundamental R&D still needs billions and years at ITER.
Government should have an important function here, but NASA doesn’t quite seem set up for that.
I don’t think the “chasm” is all that huge. The best way to cross it, in any event, is to go the Moon, start small and see what works. Private enterprise will soon be able to afford to do that. Given the way NASA does things, it’s far from obvious that NASA will ever be able to do the same.
Burying small habs in regolith should be a first step as it’s easy and small-scale, but also extensible. The initial long-term inhabitants of the Moon will mostly be hard-hats of various specialties. Such people are often very well accustomed to living in mobile-home-class housing in harsh and otherwise unpopulated environments on Earth so this lunar lifestyle would be familiar. Assuming that periodic R&R in a 1-G environment proves necessary – and I think this likely – rotation back to Earth will have to do in the early going, but one or more shielded, 1-G rotating space stations in lunar orbit would make more economic sense for this purpose at some point. Before these can be most economically built, though, mining, smelting and metal rolling industry must be built out to a minimum serviceable degree and centrifuge or mass driver systems built to enable the getting of these materials to lunar orbit without need for propellant. Everything will develop incrementally and step-wise including the power infrastructure needed to run the rest as well as the mining and refinement of frozen volatiles. Water might be used for station shielding, but if it doesn’t prove as available as some now suppose, it would also be possible to substitute sintered regolith brick.
Such people are often very well accustomed to living in mobile-home-class housing
You are taking what I have been posting for years and regurgitating it as your own. With your own little touches guaranteed to infuriate me.
You disgusting creep.
Truly the garbage people of the internet.
I’ve been reading your stuff for years and have no recollection of you ever having said anything like that, though I will freely acknowledge that my encounters with your “work” are restricted to those portions you post on sites I frequent. I don’t go looking for your stuff elsewhere as it is tediously repetitive enough in my usual haunts. If you have, indeed, written in the past that many blue collar workers are accustomed to living in spartan housing of limited volume then I guess what is said about blind squirrels and nuts is actually true.