Mars Regolith Water Extractor

The MRWE could be useful in arid terrestrial climates. Nations in arid areas, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, have spent billions of dollars on construction of evaporative and reverse osmosis desalination plants for irrigation and use for the populace. Yet water is still routinely rationed in many of these countries. Even in the driest regions of the Earth, the soil is several times wetter than on Mars, and the MRWE will operate an order of magnitude more efficiently. Even if desalination technology remains more economical in coastal areas, MWRE units using solar concentrators to provide heat offer many advantages for millions of potentials users in landlocked nations such as Mali, Niger, or Chad. Regions that are too far from the coastline to economically pipe water in, such as the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, or the Western Desert in the United States, may also be potential markets. It should be noted that in contrast to water obtained from natural liquid sources, the condensate obtained from water vaporized out of the ground will be pure, and much safer to drink than other supplies that may be available in underdeveloped areas. MRWE units sized for vehicles traveling in desert regions are also an attractive option. Such units could reduce logistical requirements for the military and could also supply civilians operating in remote areas. The MRWE concept would be ideal for these applications since it is very lightweight, cheap, and portable.

The primary initial application of the MRWE is to provide a reliable, low cost, low mass technology to produce water, hydrogen, and liquid oxygen on the surface of Mars out of indigenous materials at low power. By doing so, it will eliminate the requirement to transport hydrogen to Mars in order to make methane fuel, and allow all the propellant needed for a Mars to Earth return flight to be manufactured on Mars using a Sabatier/electrolysis (S/E) cycle, without any need for auxiliary oxygen production through zirconia cells, reverse water gas shift cycles, or other systems. This is highly advantageous since the S/E cycle is the simplest and easiest to implement of all Mars in-situ propellant production methods. The ability to extract water from Mars will also serve to supply the crew of a Mars missions with copious supplies of water itself, which after propellant, is the most massive logistic component of a Mars mission. By eliminating the need to transport fuel, oxygen, and water to Mars, the MWRE will have a major effect in reducing the mass, cost, and risk or human Mars exploration. In addition, small versions of the MWRE could be used to help make the return propellant for a Mars sample return (MSR) mission on the Martian surface, thereby making such a mission both cheaper to launch and much easier to land, as the landing mass limits of current aeroshells will not be exceeded. This could be an enabling development for the MSR mission. More »