Sierra Space nails historic 1st automated oxygen extraction from moon soil simulant

Sierra Space successfully tested its Carbothermal Oxygen Production Reactor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, marking the first automated extraction of oxygen from simulated lunar soil in a lunar-like environment.

This breakthrough highlights the company’s progress in developing space technologies to support life beyond Earth.

When the technology is expanded, it will be able to generate large amounts of oxygen, which will help NASA achieve one of the main goals of the Artemis program: creating the first permanent human presence on the moon.

Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a stepping stone for astronauts on their way to Mars.

“This sustainable future begins with developing the core technology and systems that create oxygen in that environment, using local natural resources,” said Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space, in a statement.

Simulated soil success

In 2023, NASA scientists successfully extracted oxygen from simulated lunar soil in a vacuum, advancing in-situ resource utilization to help future astronauts harness resources on the Moon’s surface.

The carbothermal reactor performs heating and oxygen extraction. For years, carbon thermal reduction has been used on Earth to produce steel and solar panels by heating carbon dioxide or monoxide to high temperatures.

Aiming to further technology in this regard, in August this year, Sierra Space test engineers worked with a lunar regolith simulant for two weeks within a thermal vacuum chamber at Johnson. This allowed the hardware to recognize the environment as being similar to the water-ice-filled south pole region of the moon.

The Sierra Space system carried out all the regolith handling procedures and the carbothermal reduction reaction, which releases oxygen from the minerals in the regolith simulant, under lunar pressures and temperatures.

According to the firm, the successful test confirms that Sierra Space’s oxygen extraction technologies and techniques are effective and could function on the lunar surface.

“These efforts confirmed that the hardware has advanced to Technology Readiness Level Six, or TRL-6, meaning it has the maturation to be incorporated into a flight mission to the moon as a technology demonstrator,” said Shawn Buckley, Vice President of Space Destinations Systems at Sierra Space, in a statement .

Moon tech milestone

Sierra Space Carbothermal Oxygen Production Reactor tests were conducted at temperatures between – 45 degrees Celsius and 1,800 degrees Celsius.

Apart from the difficulties of operating in temperatures ranging from below freezing to beyond the boiling point of lava, the hardware needed to transport the artificial lunar regolith – a material that lacks Earthly weathering processes and is therefore extremely rough and angular – across the system was also necessary.

By using a patent-pending valve design that has been shown to perform for more than 10,000 cycles, Sierra Space successfully sealed the gasses inside the reactor and managed the potentially harmful particles with the hardware.

Testing verified that Sierra Space’s system is capable of handling regolith delivered by a robotic arm or lunar rover and automatically transporting it into the reaction chamber.

The system can then carry out the carbothermal reduction reaction process to extract oxygen from the minerals in the regolith and remove the processed regolith from the system so that the process can be repeated.

“With our breakthrough technology that can provide a reliable source of oxygen in-situ, Sierra Space is poised to play a potential role in NASA’s Artemis program and other initiatives aimed at establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface, said Vice.

Resources like oxygen are essential building blocks since, while being used for breathing, they can also be utilized as propellants. This is a game-changer because it allows for affordable space exploration, which will cut the cost of upcoming Mars missions and enable a sustained lunar presence.

Relatedly, Sierra Space is participating in the 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) capability study, a research and development project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The company’s main goal is to build a framework for a commercial lunar infrastructure that incorporates hydrogen-oxygen engine technology, chemical recycling, oxygen extraction, and electrical storage.