Nebula Public Library

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.

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.

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.

Several hundred mission scenarios were analysed with a high level of detail both at mission analysis and mass budget level, to properly identify robust and feasible solutions. Three of them make use of both staging and aero-braking to reduce the spacecraft wet mass (mass with fuel), and they all rely either on chemical propulsion or on a mixed system combining a chemical engine with two very powerful electrical thrusters (ARM engines).