Immortal Molten Regolith Electrolysis Anode for Oxygen and Metals Extraction from Lunar Regolith (IMMORTAL)

Lunar Resources, an American space industrial company and leaders in resource extraction from the Moon, proposes to NASA the “Immortal Molten Regolith Electrolysis Anode for Oxygen and Metals Extraction from Lunar Regolith” (IMMORTAL) project. This NASA SBIR Phase I project will mature, characterize, and evaluate a new and novel approach to enable long lifetime anodes for metals and oxygen extraction for molten regolith electrolysis (MRE) systems. This new and novel technology eliminates anode degradation eliminating challenges of the traditional MRE process. Furthermore, it can enable greater than an order of magnitude more production. And the technology can be directly swapped for existing MRE anode subsystems and utilize the same MRE reactor design and operation.

The IMMORTAL concept will mature the ability of MRE to perform industrial scale resource extraction on the Moon for extraction of oxygen, iron, silicon, magnesium and aluminum compared to using traditional MRE anodes. Non-NASA applications including production of carbonless (green) production of metals, such as iron and aluminum on Earth.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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.