Searching for potential ice-rich mining sites on the Moon with the Lunar Volatiles Scout

Biswas, J.; Sheridan, S.; Pitcher, Craig; Richter, Lutz; Reganaz, M.; Barber, S. J.

doi:10.1016/j.pss.2019.104826

Cited by 22 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The LVS, on the other hand, offers a more controlled environment with less potential for contamination by exospheric volatiles. Even though heating samples in situ has its own challenges and limitations (Biswas et al 2020), overall the LVS design provides a measured balance between sensitivity, instrument size, and complexity for the investigation of volatiles on the surface and in the shallow subsurface.…”

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To investigate the shallow subsurface, the Lunar Volatiles Scout (LVS) will be able to sample the lunar soil to depths of about 15 cm and gather data on the changing volatile content with depth (Biswas et al 2020). It consists of a combined sample drill and volatile-extraction oven that can be inserted into the regolith to release volatiles, and of a miniature ion-trap mass spectrometer (ITMS) for the elemental analysis of the released gases.…”

Section: Scientific Instruments and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This sensitivity allows the LVS to detect all volatiles species that have previously been detected in the LCROSS ejecta plume, though we were not yet able to determine whether individual compounds could be unambiguously identified if they are all present in the same sample. However, because of the inherent sensitivity limitations of an ITMS at low masses, it will be challenging to determine the relative concentrations of smaller molecules such as water, hydroxyl, and ammonia, due to their similar fragmentation patterns (Biswas et al 2020). We are studying the feasibility of using a miniature magnetic-sector mass spectrometer to measure hydrogen and its isotopes, and have developed a prototype as part of the concept study presented here.…”

Section: Scientific Instruments and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the Distribution of Water Ice and Other Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole with LUVMI-X: A Mission Concept

et al. 2022

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The search for exploitable deposits of water and other volatiles at the Moon’s poles has intensified considerably in recent years, due to the renewed strong interest in lunar exploration. With the return of humans to the lunar surface on the horizon, the use of locally available resources to support long-term and sustainable exploration programs, encompassing both robotic and crewed elements, has moved into focus of public and private actors alike. Our current knowledge about the distribution and concentration of water and other volatiles in the lunar rocks and regolith is, however, too limited to assess the feasibility and economic viability of resource-extraction efforts. On a more fundamental level, we currently lack sufficiently detailed data to fully understand the origins of lunar water and its migration to the polar regions. In this paper, we present LUVMI-X, a mission concept intended to address the shortage of in situ data on volatiles on the Moon that results from a recently concluded design study. Its central element is a compact rover equipped with complementary instrumentation capable of investigating both the surface and shallow subsurface of illuminated and shadowed areas at the lunar south pole. We describe the rover and instrument design, the mission’s operational concept, and a preliminary landing-site analysis. We also discuss how LUVMI-X fits into the diverse landscape of lunar missions under development.

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Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scientific Instruments and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scientific Instruments and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the Distribution of Water Ice and Other Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole with LUVMI-X: A Mission Concept

et al. 2022

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“…In the framework of the Lunar Volatiles Mobile Instrumentation—Extended (LUVMI-X) project, a mid-size, low mass rover with subsystems was developed, dedicated to scout and study volatiles in lunar polar regions [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. An integrated ion trap mass spectrometer with a drill and a neutron spectrometer allow for the analysis of volatiles in the shallow subsurface and up to a meter in depth [ 10 ]. For scouting volatiles in the surficial lunar regolith but also to analyze the composition of the regolith itself, a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument called Volatiles Identification by Laser Analysis (VOILA) is part of the LUVMI-X payload.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

VOILA on the LUVMI-X Rover: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for the Detection of Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole

Vogt

Schröder

Richter

et al. 2022

Sensors

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The project Lunar Volatiles Mobile Instrumentation—Extended (LUVMI-X) developed an initial system design as well as payload and mobility breadboards for a small, lightweight rover dedicated for in situ exploration of the lunar south pole. One of the proposed payloads is the Volatiles Identification by Laser Analysis instrument (VOILA), which uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to analyze the elemental composition of the lunar surface with an emphasis on sampling regolith and the detection of hydrogen for the inference of the presence of water. It is designed to analyze targets in front of the rover at variable focus between 300 mm and 500 mm. The spectrometer covers the wavelength range from 350 nm to 790 nm, which includes the hydrogen line at 656.3 nm as well as spectral lines of most major rock-forming elements. We report here the scientific input that fed into the concept and design of the VOILA instrument configuration for the LUVMI-X rover. Moreover, we present the measurements performed with the breadboard laboratory setup for VOILA at DLR Berlin that focused on verifying the performance of the designed LIBS instrument in particular for the detection and quantification of hydrogen and other major rock forming elements in the context of in situ lunar surface analysis.

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“…This is because they are the product of the meteorite's high-speed movement, impact on the surface of celestial bodies, and lava eruption inside heavenly bodies. Therefore, such data can be used to retrieve the geological age of the stars [3], analyze the tectonic history of the lead [4], and explore the existence of iced water [5]. In addition, it can be used for autonomous navigation [6], landing site selection [7], base selection, and other missions of deep space probs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Split-Attention Networks with Self-Calibrated Convolution for Moon Impact Crater Detection from Multi-Source Data

et al. 2021

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Impact craters are the most prominent features on the surface of the Moon, Mars, and Mercury. They play an essential role in constructing lunar bases, the dating of Mars and Mercury, and the surface exploration of other celestial bodies. The traditional crater detection algorithms (CDA) are mainly based on manual interpretation which is combined with classical image processing techniques. The traditional CDAs are, however, inefficient for detecting smaller or overlapped impact craters. In this paper, we propose a Split-Attention Networks with Self-Calibrated Convolution (SCNeSt) architecture, in which the channel-wise attention with multi-path representation and self-calibrated convolutions can generate more prosperous and more discriminative feature representations. The algorithm first extracts the crater feature model under the well-known target detection R-FCN network framework. The trained models are then applied to detecting the impact craters on Mercury and Mars using the transfer learning method. In the lunar impact crater detection experiment, we managed to extract a total of 157,389 impact craters with diameters between 0.6 and 860 km. Our proposed model outperforms the ResNet, ResNeXt, ScNet, and ResNeSt models in terms of recall rate and accuracy is more efficient than that other residual network models. Without training for Mars and Mercury remote sensing data, our model can also identify craters of different scales and demonstrates outstanding robustness and transferability.

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Searching for potential ice-rich mining sites on the Moon with the Lunar Volatiles Scout

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Cited by 22 publications

References 27 publications

Assessing the Distribution of Water Ice and Other Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole with LUVMI-X: A Mission Concept

Assessing the Distribution of Water Ice and Other Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole with LUVMI-X: A Mission Concept

VOILA on the LUVMI-X Rover: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for the Detection of Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole

Split-Attention Networks with Self-Calibrated Convolution for Moon Impact Crater Detection from Multi-Source Data

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