Nebula Public Library

The knowledge bank of ESA’s R&D programmes

Lunar ISRU Demonstration Mission Definition Study Segment 3

Programme
Discovery
Programme Reference
18_M-HRE-1B
Start Date
End Date
Status
Closed
Country
UK
Lunar ISRU Demonstration Mission Definition Study Segment 3
Description

The ISRU-DM mission aims to perform the first demonstration of ISRU on the Moon, via the production of water or oxygen from raw lunar material (i.e. regolith, ice etc.) At Agency-level a phase-0 level study was also performed to understand the technical and programmatic feasibility of undertaking the ISRU-DM mission via the provision of commercial services from industry.

To this end, this study was split into three ‘segments’; the first studying the ISRU payload itself, the second studying the transportation and delivery of the ISRU payload to the lunar surface, and the third studying the provision of a communications service to the ISRU payload once on the Moon. SSTL and GES have been working as part of this third Segment, and this report contains a summary of the work done in this area for the ISRU-DM study.

Keywords
Executive summary