Space Resources on the Moon and Space Mining

Abstract

Space mining is the biggest challenge of the 21st century. The existence of resources such as volatiles and oxides, metals, and water discovered in recent years on the Moon, Mars, and near-Earth asteroids indicates that their grade would reach sufficient levels to supply raw materials for future human settlements in the solar system. Although these issues have been widely addressed in the last 50 years, technical information in Spanish is scarce for the Hispanic community. This document is based on an extensive systematic review spanning from 1987 to 2022 and includes distribution maps of the major resources on the Moon. The article explains the main challenges in the prospecting stage as well as the limitations for excavation and transport, such as low temperatures (50°C) or topography (slopes > 25°). The summary includes details of the main routes for the recovery of water, oxygen, and metals, as well as the metallurgical conditions for obtaining water and oxygen (for example, temperature: 200K to 2000K). It is concluded that there is an important technological advance to enable the extraction of materials on the moon and thatwe are close to seeing the first operational units on its surface.