Description: The technology proposed in this proposal will help future lunar missions by moving regolith on the moon in a way that has minimal impact from abrasive lunar dust and can be oriented at any angle, meaning the conveyance system can be anywhere between vertical and horizontal. The static auger conveyor is mass and energy efficient and can also be made modular. Other benefits include similar operation at any speed and the ability to change speeds on the fly. Ports can be placed anywhere along the tube to conduct sampling and measurements to determine composition. Funding will be used to conduct trade studies and develop and test small scale prototypes. Target markets of course include lunar applications, but also many applications on earth, such as manufacturing plants, agricultural conveyance applications, and industrial mining.

Benefits: This technology supports future NASA lunar missions because it will be used to efficiently move lunar regolith from one location to another. Regolith will be sampled across the lunar landscape in search of both water and other precious materials. In-situ resource utilization processing centers are expected to process the raw lunar regolith to extract water and other useful materials that are embedded in the lunar regolith. However, the lunar regolith must be moved from one location to another to move between the processing centers. The simplest and likely most energy efficient method is to create a system of conveyors that are permanently established between the ISRU extraction centers. Our technology will be these conveyors that will move the material and provide access to the regolith inside the conveyors to sample for material properties. Our conveyor technology performs at angle angle from perfectly vertical to perfectly horizontal, with little difference in performance. This technology can also move at any flow rate (from zero to the maximum specified) and can change on the fly.This technology can be used in many industries such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Any industry or application that requires the conveyance of any granular material, but it is especially useful for dusty and hazardous materials.