Small Body Regolith Extraction System

Subsurface access, material extraction, transport and storage are important for fulfillment of both Science and Exploration mission goals. Microgravity material handling is significantly different than our terrestrial engineering, mining and material-processing experience. The material handling equipment and components developed under this project resembles some terrestrial drilling, and material-transport, storage and handling equipment, but also offer significant improvements in both function and robustness for microgravity applications over more conventional drilling or excavation approaches. These new tools could facilitate development of robust ISRU processing operations under microgravity. Access to unweathered subsurface material is crucial for evaluation of both the origin of a body and for extraction of resources. The ability of extract a significant quantity of subsurface material without exposure to the space environment and without the addition of any diluting gases offers a significant benefit over alternatives that have been proposed. In addition to the prototype regolith extraction and handling equipment, the simulation tools developed and calibrated for predicting their performance, could also be utilized by NASA programs designing future microgravity missions.

Deep Space Industries, Shackleton Energy, and Planetary Resources are three of the relatively new commercial entities planning to make use of extraterrestrial resources. These entities and others seeking to utilize resources on small solar system bodies could benefit from the tools being developed here. The drill-head feeder developed here also overcomes a well-known problem with conventional vertical screw conveying, namely, that the vortex or swirl-action of the material near the entrance to a screw conveyor can prevent material from entering the conveyor, often causing vertical screw-conveyors to operate in a 'feed-starved' mode unless they are 'force-fed'. The feeder/drill-head design developed here accomplishes the function of force-feeding the attached screw-augers so that they are not feed-starved. Eight out of ten suppliers of large industrial conveying equipment which includes vertical screw conveyors, only offer them with separately powered horizontal screw conveyor-feeders, to supply material to a force-fed transfer point where the vertical screw conveyor picks up the material fed into it, and elevates it. The other two suppliers of large vertical screw-like conveyors (Olds Elevator and Siwertell) both utilize rotating scoops at the bottom of their vertical conveyors to gather material and force it into the vertical conveying pipe. The drill-head feeders developed here could greatly simplify feeding of vertical screw conveyors and improve their performance. More »