SBIR-STTR Award

With the Artemis program, NASA plans to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. The need for oxygen extraction from lunar regolith has been identified by STMD (Space Technology Mission Directorate). As knowledge about lunar water recourses is limited, alternative pathways to extract oxygen are requested, recognizing the need to make progress on the technology required to extract oxygen from dry lunar regolith. The entire lunar surface is covered with regolith, which can be 4 – 15 m deep depending on locations. As a whole, it holds more than 40 wt.% oxygen (O) as solid oxides with SiO2 being the largest (up to 53 wt.% SiO2). Successful oxygen extraction from lunar regolith resources would benefit for life support and propulsion needs. Oxygen extraction from lunar regolith by vacuum pyrolysis has been demonstrated and considered to be one of the ideal options because no reagents and reductants are required, thus needing minimal consumables. Despite its large oxygen production potential, it is reported that vacuum pyrolysis needs to overcome several technical hurdles to be commercialized. The following four key technical challenges are identified that have been impeding technology readiness level (TRL) advancement of the vacuum pyrolysis approaches. This project provides a supporting technology for vacuum pyrolysis, by utilizing a solid-oxide oxygen ion transport approach, which intends to address the technical challenges identified above, to contribute to advancing the current TRL of the vacuum pyrolysis technology. Oxygen separation using a solid oxide electrolyte for vacuum pyrolysis has never been reported in the literature and U.S. patents. Anticipated

Benefits:
The proposed technology that extracts high purity oxygen from a complex volatile mixture during vacuum pyrolysis is applicable to NASA’s lunar exploration needs (Artemis Program). The proposed technology that extracts high purity oxygen from a complex volatile mixture during vacuum pyrolysis and it also effectively produces high purity metals such as silicon as byproduct to be used by metallurgical industri

With the Artemis program, NASA currently plans to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2025, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. The need for oxygen extraction from lunar regolith has been identified by the STMD (Space Technology Mission Directorate). Successful oxygen extraction from the abundant regolith resources would enable extended astronauts’ stays and repeated/further travels at substantially lower costs. Such a technology, if successful, is expected to benefit growing aerospace activities from both government agencies and the private sector. The A-Terra’s solid state ion transport vacuum pyrolysis technology is fully renewable-energy based, which empowers rapid production of 99%+ high purity oxygen and metals from the lunar regolith. A-Terra now shifts to Phase II where a bench scale oxygen extraction apparatus will be constructed based on their successful Phase I outcomes. The Phase II system will have the same basic components as the Phase I model, however, it will be tactically redesigned and upgraded to produce the oxygen at a rate of 100 kg/year or higher, assuming approximately 180 days of sun light availability on the moon and no battery utilization is considered for supplemental night operations. Anticipated

Benefits:
The proposed technology is applicable to NASA’s lunar and planetary explorations where oxygen supplies are critical for life support and propellant needs to enable extended astronauts stays and repeated/further travels from the moon (Artemis program). The target markets for the proposed technology would be aerospace (private industries) and resource industries (mining, suppliers, utilization, smelting, etc.). The proposed technology is renewable energy based and expected to ‘cleanly’ produce high purity metals such as silicon as byproduct at competiti