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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.

There is increased attention being given to safeguarding Earth's 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 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.