EcoMine™ – Bioregenerative Mineral Mining from Lunar Regolith

NASA’s plans to establish a sustained Lunar presence for scientific research, Mars mission preparation, and a thriving commercial Lunar economy will require significant surface infrastructure. The use of in situ resources enables a more economical and sustainable approach to constructing this infrastructure, while providing an alternative source of rare Earth minerals for terrestrial use. Lunar regolith contains an abundance of Si and Al in anorthite, Fe and Ti in ilmenite, magnesium, and other REEs in mare regolith, that can be used for in-situ construction. However, traditional Earth mining processes are not economically feasible on the moon, due to high energy demands, labor needs, high mass transport costs for consumable reagents, lower ore quality, and potential environmental and safety impacts. NASA seeks space mining technologies to extract metals and feedstocks from Lunar regolith that are 1) autonomous, 2) robust to the Lunar surface environment 3) reduce the mass of raw material (ore) transported from the mine to the processor; 4) are economically feasible; and 5) efficiently regenerate and/or recycle reagents used. The proposed EcoMine™ is a bioregenerative mining facility for use on the Lunar surface. The goals of this project are to develop and validate a detailed design of EcoMine to autonomously, safely, and efficiently extract and separate Al, Ti, Fe, and Si minerals from Lunar highland regolith and prepare for small scale Lunar surface demonstration. In Phase II, Space Lab will continue collaborative work with the Colorado School of Mines, to advance EcoMine to TRL6 and prepare for advancement to TRL7. Phase II objectives are to: 1) Specify key architectural elements and process parameters; 2) Demonstrate end-to-end biomine process with an engineering demonstration unit (EDU); 3) Validate and refine performance and cost predictions in a laboratory environment with an EDU; and 4) Prepare for protoflight demonstration in a Lunar surface environment.

EcoMine™ is a major step towards a viable, sustainable Lunar space mining economy with several innovative features relative to state-of-the-art, including improved safety, lower energy demands, little to no mass for consumable reagents, improved extraction efficiency for low grade ore, autonomy (requiring little human operator time), and mobility to reduce the distance between excavation, processing, and regolith disposal. This technology will support NASA’s plans to establish a sustained Lunar presence. EcoMine™ closed-loop bioregenerative mining offers commercial Lunar mine operators an environmentally safe and more profitable way to recover minerals from regolith needed for Lunar surface construction, as well as rare elements of value on Earth, with less energy consumption, higher extraction efficiency, and significantly less mass transport costs than traditional chemical mining solutions. EcoMine™ is a major step towards a viable, sustainable lunar economy. Primary customers include Lunar infrastructure construction companies.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.