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The main aspect of this study is 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 the demonstration to produce water/or oxygen with materials from the Moon. This payload delivery service should be an end-to end service from Earth to a targeted location on the Moon, launched not later than 2025.

There is an increased attention to safeguarding the Earth orbital environment, as reflected by the number of relevant regulations that are being set forward by national governments and international organisations. Among others, ESA has published a Space Debris Mitigation Policy for Agency Projects (ESA/ADMIN/IPOL(2014)2), supported by the corresponding ESA Space Debris Mitigation Compliance Verification Guidelines (ESSB-HB-U-002).

The study and exploitation of In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technologies (with an initial focus on the Moon) are stimulating an increasing interest in the international community, both at Agencies and industry levels, in view and preparation of future manned 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.