A brief review of chemical and mineralogical resources on the Moon and likely initial in situ resource utilization (ISRU) applications

Anand, M.; Crawford, Ian; Balat‐Pichelin, Marianne; Abanades, Stéphane; Westrenen, W. van; Péraudeau, G.; Jaumann, R.; Seboldt, W.

doi:10.1016/j.pss.2012.08.012

Cited by 232 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Lunar resources that have gained significance, many of which have been previously presented and discussed in [24,26,133,134], are briefly summarized here.…”

Section: Other Potential Lunar Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of Extraterrestrial Rare Earth Elements: To the Moon and Beyond

McLeod

Krekeler

2017

Resources

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Abstract:The resource budget of Earth is limited. Rare-earth elements (REEs) are used across the world by society on a daily basis yet several of these elements have <2500 years of reserves left, based on current demand, mining operations, and technologies. With an increasing population, exploration of potential extraterrestrial REE resources is inevitable, with the Earth's Moon being a logical first target. Following lunar differentiation at~4.50-4.45 Ga, a late-stage (after~99% solidification) residual liquid enriched in Potassium (K), Rare-earth elements (REE), and Phosphorus (P), (or "KREEP") formed. Today, the KREEP-rich region underlies the Oceanus Procellarum and Imbrium Basin region on the lunar near-side (the Procellarum KREEP Terrain, PKT) and has been tentatively estimated at preserving 2.2 × 10 8 km 3 of KREEP-rich lithologies. The majority of lunar samples (Apollo, Luna, or meteoritic samples) contain REE-bearing minerals as trace phases, e.g., apatite and/or merrillite, with merrillite potentially contributing up to 3% of the PKT. Other lunar REE-bearing lunar phases include monazite, yittrobetafite (up to 94,500 ppm yttrium), and tranquillityite (up to 4.6 wt % yttrium, up to 0.25 wt % neodymium), however, lunar sample REE abundances are low compared to terrestrial ores. At present, there is no geological, mineralogical, or chemical evidence to support REEs being present on the Moon in concentrations that would permit their classification as ores. However, the PKT region has not yet been mapped at high resolution, and certainly has the potential to yield higher REE concentrations at local scales (<10s of kms). Future lunar exploration and mapping efforts may therefore reveal new REE deposits. Beyond the Moon, Mars and other extraterrestrial materials are host to REEs in apatite, chevkinite-perrierite, merrillite, whitlockite, and xenotime. These phases are relatively minor components of the meteorites studied to date, constituting <0.6% of the total sample. Nonetheless, they dominate a samples REE budget with their abundances typically 1-2 orders of magnitude enriched relative to their host rock. As with the Moon, though phases which host REEs have been identified, no extraterrestrial REE resource, or ore, has been identified yet. At present extraterrestrial materials are therefore not suitable REE-mining targets. However, they are host to other resources that will likely be fundamental to the future of space exploration and support the development of in situ resource utilization, for example: metals (Fe, Al, Mg, PGEs) and water.

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“…Lunar resources that have gained significance, many of which have been previously presented and discussed in [24,26,133,134], are briefly summarized here.…”

Section: Other Potential Lunar Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of Extraterrestrial Rare Earth Elements: To the Moon and Beyond

McLeod

Krekeler

2017

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“…• The availability of cheap propellant will transform the goals of national space agencies, enabling them to do more frequent and more ambitious missions [152,153], which create a need for even more progress. • These developments will make a lunar outpost more affordable [9] so eventually it will be established, provisioned by lunar mining [153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161]. Space agencies will fund the maturation of key technologies including the manufacture of solar cells [162,163] and structures [30,[164][165][166][167][168] from in situ resources.…”

Section: Practical Demonstration Requiredmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space development and space science together, an historic opportunity

Metzger

2016

Space Policy

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The national space programs have an historic opportunity to help solve the global-scale economic and environmental problems of Earth while becoming more effective at science through the use of space resources. Space programs will be more cost-effective when they work to establish a supply chain in space, mining and manufacturing then replicating the assets of the supply chain so it grows to larger capacity. This has become achievable because of advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. It is roughly estimated that developing a lunar outpost that relies upon and also develops the supply chain will cost about 1/3 or less of the existing annual budgets of the national space programs. It will require a sustained commitment of several decades to complete, during which time science and exploration become increasingly effective. At the end, this space industry will capable of addressing global-scale challenges including limited resources, clean energy, economic development, and preservation of the environment. Other potential solutions, including nuclear fusion and terrestrial renewable energy sources, do not address the root problem of our limited globe and there are real questions whether they will be inadequate or too late. While industry in space likewise cannot provide perfect assurance, it is uniquely able to solve the root problem, and it gives us an important chance that we should grasp. What makes this such an historic opportunity is that the space-based solution is obtainable as a side-benefit of doing space science and exploration within their existing budgets. Thinking pragmatically, it may take some time for policymakers to agree that setting up a complete supply chain is an achievable goal, so this paper describes a strategy of incremental progress. The most crucial part of this strategy is establishing a water economy by mining on the Moon and asteroids to manufacture rocket propellant. Technologies that support a water economy will play an important role leading toward space development.Please cite this article in press as: P.T. Metzger, Space development and space science together, an historic opportunity, Space Policy (2016), http://dx.

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“…Non-permanently shadowed high-latitude localities are of course amenable to solar-powered robotic exploration, and proposals such as 'Lunar Beagle' [129] would provide valuable initial measurements of volatiles in these environments. In the longer term, a full characterisation of polar volatiles, as for other aspects of lunar geology, would benefit from the increased mobility and flexibility that would be provided by human exploration (which would of course be facilitated at the poles if exploitable quantities of volatiles prove to be present [127,130]).…”

Section: (Iii) Polar Volatilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lunar exploration: opening a window into the history and evolution of the inner Solar System

Crawford

Joy

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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The lunar geological record contains a rich archive of the history of the inner Solar System, including information relevant to understanding the origin and evolution of the Earth–Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and our local cosmic environment. This paper provides a brief review of lunar exploration to-date and describes how future exploration initiatives will further advance our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Moon, the Earth–Moon system and of the Solar System more generally. It is concluded that further advances will require the placing of new scientific instruments on, and the return of additional samples from, the lunar surface. Some of these scientific objectives can be achieved robotically, for example by in situ geochemical and geophysical measurements and through carefully targeted sample return missions. However, in the longer term, we argue that lunar science would greatly benefit from renewed human operations on the surface of the Moon, such as would be facilitated by implementing the recently proposed Global Exploration Roadmap.

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A brief review of chemical and mineralogical resources on the Moon and likely initial in situ resource utilization (ISRU) applications

Cited by 232 publications

References 53 publications

Sources of Extraterrestrial Rare Earth Elements: To the Moon and Beyond

Sources of Extraterrestrial Rare Earth Elements: To the Moon and Beyond

Space development and space science together, an historic opportunity

Lunar exploration: opening a window into the history and evolution of the inner Solar System

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