The year is 2028. The astronauts living on the south pole of the moon are laying the groundwork to expand the colony into a sustainable city. Construction of large scale infrastructure, including habitats and greenhouses being manufactured by robots, is underway to support hundreds of workers, scientists, business professionals and tourists that will soon call the moon "home". Amidst the monitoring of the health and well-being of these early settlers includes the one thing they need at all times: oxygen. Easily taken for granted on Earth, the oxygen is not pulled from the air around them, but rather the ground beneath their feet. The 24/7 operation of Molten Regolith Electrolysis (MRE) provides enough oxygen to support the first lunar outpost as it scales upward in population, completely independent of Earth’s resources. The MRE technology is a promising candidate to produce oxygen from lunar regolith using a single-step reactor that requires no consumable materials and produces useful metals like iron, silicon and aluminum. To make an MRE reactor a reality, this project aims to develop a specialized heater device for the reactor that enables the electrolysis process to take place. This device will improve the lifetime of the reactor by eliminating contact between corrosive molten regolith and the reactor walls and will decrease the total energy consumption of the reactor. By developing this heater device, construction of an end-to-end electrolysis reactor prototype can begin and we can make demonstrations of the promising MRE technology to convert regolith to oxygen. Year one of this ECI project will conclude with the assembly and demonstration of a reaction starter device capable of melting regolith in a precisely controlled location. Success at the end of year two means having a working MRE prototype that operates without lifetime constraints of corrosion, reliably produces oxygen/useful metals, and can serve as a platform for future development of sub-systems of MRE. Honeybee Robotics will serve as the project's official partner and will be key to rapid design and prototyping. They will also be contributing senior project personnel as mentors for the team. They have a proven track record of success with aerospace projects, such as PlanetVac and Heat Flow Probe, which were developed under SBIR and selected to be flown to the moon on CLPS missions.

Research and build a device to kick off the process of Molten Regolith Electrolysis to allow the extraction of oxygen (as well as other chemicals) from lunar regolith.