Mining the Martian Surface for in Situ Resources

Martian Ice Extraction Technology Roadmap

The technology roadmap identifier:

• 3MIM - Mars In Situ Mining

The number 3 denotes that this roadmap refers to a level 3. For this technology, Level 1 refers to the technology system required to mine, alter, and create resources on Mars, including various types of mining and electrolysis. The system for autonomous mining is a Level 2, and the sub-system (Level 3) of excavation is defined in this roadmap. A level 4 technology would consist of a sub-component of the excavation process, such as drill bits and power generation.

Roadmap Overview

Vital resources to construct habitats and sustain life on Mars are required in order for humans to visit and maintain on the "Red Planet". The current state of technology requires that all resources for human survival on Mars must be brought with astronauts or sent from Earth prior to the crew's arrival. There are limitations in the cost of sending cargo and mass-launch capabilities of current propulsion. One way to solve this discrepancy is to send and technology and machinery to Mars with the intent that it will be able to gather the vital resources in situ prior to the next launch window and human arrival. This roadmap focuses on the autonomous mining excavating technologies required to accrue water on Mars.

The Mars water extraction technology would fall under the matter transporting category of the functional taxonomy. We model our extraction technology on the extraction architecture deemed the most successful by Honey Bee Robotics’ most recent experiments on Planetary Volatile Extraction (PVEx). The extraction technology they deemed the most efficient approach in terms of both water extraction and energy consumption is referred to as the “corer” and takes the form of a dual wall coring auger.

Figure 1 - Mars Mining Vehicle Corer Extraction Technology

Figure 1 was created by our team in order to graphically demonstrate the corer technology. The inner wall is composed of heaters, while the outer wall is composed of a composite, insulating material. Once the inner coring drill breaks through the crust and reaches ice, the inner wall begins to heat. Ice sublimation occurs, and the evaporated gas travels between the heated inner wall and insulated outer wall through a surface hood to the cold trap. Deposition occurs in the cold trap, turning the gas back into an ice form.

Technology Hierarchy Tree

The below technology hierarchy tree shows the break down of technology starting at L1 Technology (Mars Mining) and moving to L2 Technology (Autonomous Mars Mining). Our technology roadmap examines a L3 Technology (Mars Mining Ice Extraction), which serves as an integral component of Autonomous Mars Mining. Our selected technology can be further broken down into L4 Technologies, such as the coring drill, the inner wall, and the outer wall.

DSM Allocation

Below is the DSM Allocation for the interdependencies of the the systems and subsystems related to the technology roadmap. This diagram corresponds to the hierarchy tree in Figure 2. The excavation technology has numerous co-dependencies of systems, subsystems, and components. This will be further investigated to better understand the performance and timeline tradeoffs for the technology roadmap.

Figure 3 - DSM Martian Mining Technology Roadmap

Roadmap Model using Object-Process-Methodology (OPM)

We created an Object-Process-Diagram (OPD) of the Mars Mining Extraction Technology below in Figure 4. The diagram serves to capture the main object of the roadmap, the corer, its decomposition into sub-components (coring drill, inner wall, outer wall), its characterization by Figures of Merit (FOMs) and the main processes of the system (Drilling, Heating, etc.).

Figure 4 - Ice Extraction OPD

An Object-Process-Language (OPL) description of the above OPD provides a lingual breakdown of the OPD. The OPL is automatically-generated.

Figure 5 - Ice Extraction OPL

Figures of Merit (FOM) Definition

The table below shows a list of figures of merit by which a water extraction technology on Mars could be assessed. As a team we focused heavily on the bolded figures of merit in the table, and included a majority of them in the OPD.

Figure 6 - Ice Extraction Figures of Merit

Alignment with “Company” Strategic Drivers: FOM targets

The two objectives represent a breakdown of NASA’s Strategic Objective 2.2, taken from the NASA Strategic Plan 2018.

Technical Model: Morphological Matrix and Tradespace

The market for interplanetary mining is still emerging, so to incorporate cost in the trade space the various versions of celestial drills, a model based equation is used to correlate mass to one-time cost of producing and sending the drill to Mars.

Keys Publications and Patents

Publications

A Water Rich Mars Surface Mission Scenario

This paper serves as an assessment of how the presence of water on Mars could impact future human Mars mission scenarios. It discusses the location of the most promising water sources, known as feedstock, and analyzes how various rates of water extraction could support different human mission architectures.

The most promising feedstock are massive ice deposits at mid latitudes which bear resemblance to terrestrial glacial features. Various impact craters on these ice deposits expose verified, excavated clean ice under surface regolith. The regolith overburden is estimated to be less than two meters, making drilling to the pure water ice very feasible. Additionally, the location of these ice deposits at mid latitudes make them conducive to a permanent human settlement, unlike feedstock located at the poles.

Planetary Volatiles Extractor for ISRU

This paper describes experiments performed by Honeybee Robotics in which various different mining architectures were tested in their ability to extract ice from rock regolith. The findings and conclusion of this paper inspired our choice in drilling technology for our extracting system.

Three different technologies were tested in an environment simulating Martian temperatures and pressures. These technologies were the sniffer, the mobile in situ water extractor (MISWE), and the corer. The corer was determined to be the most efficient in terms of both power consumption and water extraction, and the least complex of the proposed systems.

The corer can be described as a dual wall coring auger. The inner wall is composed of heaters and the outer wall is made of an insulating material. After the drill penetrates the surface and captures a core, the heaters are turned on to sublimate the core. The volatiles will flow between the two walls, staying heated due to the insulated outer wall, into a cold trap on the surface. The insulating outer auger surface results in high power efficiency. The drilling efficiency is also high as opposed to a full face drill because the coring drill only cuts a small annulus. The corer also addresses the predicted problem of losing volatiles that sublime when reached. This is because the sublimed volatiles will flow directly into a capture system, mitigating any loss of resources.