NASA Data Helps Plan Commercial Moon Mining

Lunar Station Corp. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is using NASA lunar data to help commercial space companies plan mining and other operations needed for living off the Moon.

Water and minerals such as iron and titanium exist on the Moon, but extracting and processing them will require special equipment. Where those resources are found will dictate where to land and how to mine.

The MoonHacker program fuses data from NASA's Planetary Data System to identify indicators for shallow pits of lunar water. That work builds on NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission, which in 2009 crashed its upper stage into the Moon's South Pole and revealed water ice in the resulting plume.

Lunar Station also uses NASA's open-source Ames Stereo Pipeline to create 3D terrain models showing rock placement and elevation. Its Radiation Simulator subjects a digital twin of a rover or satellite to radiation en route or at the mission site to determine required protection.

CEO Blair DeWitt said the company can identify landing pad sites, rover paths, and communication relay strategies for areas where Earth is not visible. The work exemplifies NASA's Technology Transfer program, which has documented everyday benefits of space technology through its Spinoff publication for 50 years.