A million-dollar contest managed by Marshall’s Space Flight Center is pushing forward technology that could one day support human life on the moon.
Teams from across the country gathered in Huntsville to overcome challenges impacting the future of space exploration. The six teams competing at Alabama A&M’s Agribition Center have successfully excavated and collected imitation regolith, or the material that covers the surface of the moon.
“We want to mine water on the moon,” NASA’s In-Situ Resource Utilization System Capability Lead Gerald Sanders said. “Water could be used for many different things: life support crew, radiation shielding, making propellants.”
The robots are designed to collect frozen water on the moon and transport it across the lunar surface.
“The worst case is that it’s highly concentrated in ice mixed with regolith,” Sanders said. “It’s almost as hard as concrete.
The robots have to be capable of mining and collecting tough material. The building process has been underway since 2020 for many of the teams competing in Huntsville.
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