Trump Wants To Mine The Moon. This Is How NASA Will Do That Using ‘Roomba’-Sized Rovers

NASA wants to send astronauts back to the moon—and then mine it to create a self-sustaining moon base. We already knew that, but an executive order signed by President Donald Trump yesterday makes it clear that the U.S. will disregard any international treaty that attempts to limit that.

In 2024, the Artemis 3 mission will touchdown at the Moon’s South Pole. The one female and one male astronauts will become the first moonwalkers of the 21st century, 55 years after Apollo 17 blasted-off. 

Although Artemis 3 is planned to include only a brief visit to the lunar surface, NASA has grander plans for future Artemis missions in the late 2020s—“a sustained lunar presence,” in fact. 

Can we really live and work on the moon?

Key questions remain before that can become a reality. What’s it really like on the moon? Exactly what resources does it have in specific locations? How will the lunar environment—radiation and solar activity—affect humans who attempt to live and work there? NASA will attempt to answer those questions in advance using a fleet of small lunar rovers, sent up to the moon alone to gather intel in advance of the arrival of humans.

Trouble is, existing science payloads are too big, too heavy, and require too much power for small rovers. 

Soap-sized science

NASA needs new, miniaturized payload designs that can be sent to the moon in the next 1-4 years. For miniaturized read really, really small. “Imagine a rover the size of your Roomba crawling the moon’s surface,” said Sabah Bux, a technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory about the rovers NASA intends to send to the moon (some are self-driving, some not). “Science payloads need to be similar in size to a new bar of soap to fit cleanly inside the rover—100 x 100 x 50 mm.” 

Cue the “NASA Mini Payload Challenge,” launched today by crowdsourcing platform HeroX on behalf of the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. They’re offering prizes totalling $160,000 to anyone in the world that can come up with designs of miniature payloads. Anyone over 18 years old can enter. 

A moon-base independent of Earth? 

“These new lunar micro-rovers will be launching over the next several years to gather information about and conduct scientific research on the lunar surface,” said Bux. “To meet the size, weight, and power constraints of these micro-rovers, new scientific payloads have to be designed, built, and tested in time for the different launch opportunities.” 

However, NASA wants these tiny payloads to do more than just deploy sensors and collect information about the lunar environment. “As human space exploration evolves toward a permanent presence on the lunar surface, In situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) will become increasingly important—resupply missions are very expensive,” said Bux. “We need to develop practical and affordable ways to identify and use lunar resources, so that our astronaut crews can become more independent of Earth.” 

Future astronauts will need to be able to locate and collect lunar resources, and then transform them into the essentials for life: 

• breathable air
• water for drinking and food production
• building materials for shelter
• rocket propellants

“Our mission capabilities will rapidly increase when useful products can be created from in-situ resources,” said Bux. 

The rise of regolith

What will be in the science payloads? NASA is most interested in payloads that will help identify and characterize lunar resources—and that means the regolith that dominates the lunar surface. “Loose, fragmental material … it’s the debris thrown out of the impact craters,” said Bux. “Minable concentrations of resources in the regolith need to be mapped so NASA can select the best locations to send our astronauts.” The rovers will be looking for volatile compounds such as water, carbon dioxide and methane. “They are of special interest because they are essential for life support and can be used for propellant production,” said Bux. “Regolith containing minerals with high concentrations of oxygen, carbon, titanium, and iron are also of interest, and sulfur is also important because it can be used as a binding agent for lunar construction.”

So NASA is looking for payloads that can examine the regolith—right down to densities with depth, cohesiveness, grain sizes and blockiness—and how they vary at the poles, as well as conducting experiments in using regolith resources to “make” things. 

Although many prospecting technologies for these minerals and elements are successfully used on Earth, in order to be used on the moon they need to be miniaturized and repackaged.

Back on Earth

Such advances in our knowledge of the lunar surface are also expected to have knock-on effects on Earth. “The ability to prospect, map, and characterize these in-situ resources not only increases NASA’s progress towards a sustained presence on the moon, but also could revolutionize mining, purification systems, the pharmaceutical industry, and other commercial industries—much as we realized enormous technological benefits and advances from the Apollo Program,” said Bux. 

“On our continued quest to gather information on lunar resources and lunar science, we're calling on solvers to push the limits of what’s possible … we look forward to witnessing the innovation.”

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.