Throughout the Spring 2020 academic semester CLASS in partnership with the Florida Space Institute will be holding a seminar speaker series. The series is open to everyone. Seminars last 45 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. If you are interested in presenting, wish to recommend someone for a presentation, or would like to be on the mailing list, please contact us.
| Date | Speaker |
|---|---|
| 1/14 | Philipp Reiß, ESA |
| 1/28 | Bob Lamboray, Luxembourg Space Agency |
| 2/11 | Koorosh Araghi, NASA JSC |
| 2/25 | Amanda Hendrix, PSI |
| 3/24 | Joel Sercel, TransAstra |
| 4/7 | Joost Oorschot, Maana Electric |
Date: Jan 14, 2020
Time: 11:30am
Recorded talk: No recording available
PROSPECTing for lunar resources – challenges of in-situ extraction and analysis of water
Abstract
The European Space Agency is developing the instrument package PROSPECT (Platform for Resource Observation and in-Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Commercial exploitation and Transportation) as a contribution to the Luna-27 mission of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Luna-27 is scheduled to land in the south pole area of the Moon by 2024/25. PROSPECT will acquire samples from a depth up to >1 m using a drill, and heat them up to 1000 °C for analysis of the released volatiles in an on-board laboratory. Additionally, samples will be chemically reduced to demonstrate the in-situ production of water from lunar minerals. The preservation of volatiles during the sampling process has been identified as one of the major challenges since lost volatiles could affect the scientific output of the instrument. The understanding of heat and mass transfer processes inside the sample is crucial to estimate the loss of volatiles. This talk will present the recent development of a simulation model to investigate this issue and its experimental verification at low temperature and high vacuum, including a process for the hydration of a lunar regolith simulant. The talk will also introduce the instrument PROSPECT and report on the current status of the project.
Dr. Philipp Reiss is a Research Fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA/ESTEC) in the Lunar Resource Lander Team, mainly working on the development of the instrument package PROSPECT for Luna-27. He graduated from Technical University of Munich in 2018, where he lead the research on technologies and instrumentation for lunar exploration. During his time at TU Munich he worked on various DLR/ESA/EU funded research projects and lead microgravity experiments on a sounding rocket and a partial-g parabolic flight. Dr. Reiss studied aerospace engineering in Munich (M.Sc.) and Bremen (B.Eng.). His recent and current research focuses on prospecting for lunar resources, the thermal extraction of volatiles from lunar regolith, and the processing and utilization of lunar minerals.