The contract was part of the broader framework of two ESA-led mission study teams performing parallel and independent activities to establish the mission concept, considering the ISRU payload (Segment 1), the delivery service (lander, Segment 2) and the communication service (Segment 3).

In this context the scope of the OHB Italia contract activities was related to defining the ISRU Payload.

Solar System bodies – including the Moon and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) – contain a rich diversity of materials such as metals and volatiles that could be used as energy sources and as means to sustain human life, as humankind ventures deeper into space. Space agencies worldwide are considering such resources as potential raw materials for space infrastructure development, based on recent technological advances related to space in-situ manufacturing.

The main aspect of this study is to investigate the feasibility of the mission concept and the demonstration of the economic viability of a commercial payload delivery service to the Moon, as well as demonstrating the production of water/or oxygen with materials from the Moon. The study considered a payload delivery service that would be an end-to end service from Earth to a targeted location on the Moon, launched not later than 2025.

Several studies have addressed the building of a lunar base either under ESA or other space agencies and entities. These studies have looked at conceptual designs, often of one specific element of the base, while most of the requirements are not adequately or not at all taken into consideration.

The study and exploitation of In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) technologies (with an initial focus on the Moon) are stimulating an increasing interest in the international community, both at Agency and industry levels, in view of and in preparation for future crewed exploration missions and in terms of scientific and societal long-term benefits.

ALCHEMIST is a payload design created in order to produce water from lunar regolith so as to demonstrate the end-to-end process of hydrogen reduction of FeO on the lunar surface.

Today, aboard ISS, the crew is regularly resupplied with necessary metabolic consumables (i.e. food, water and air) coming from Earth. These consumables are generally packaged into dedicated containers, which cannot be re-used and have to be wasted. For food only, the amount of wastes generated by packaging is estimated to be between 300 and 500g/crew member and day, which represents close to 40% of packed food mass.

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.

The mushroom-forming fungi Pleurotus ostreatus (PO), Trametes versicolor (TV) and Schizophyllum commune (SC) are known to effectively colonise organic material. These fungi were grown on the aquatic fern Azolla filiculoides (AF), the fastest growing plant on Earth, and that can fix its own nitrogen. SC showed the best growth on AF. Therefore, growth of this fungus was determined under microgravity conditions and high radiation dosage (up to 200 Gy) and related to melanin production.