Exploratory party inspects Hawaiian site for testing lunar exploration hardware. Newly formed Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo is working with NASA on using the location to evaluate drilling and extraction equipment that would transform lunar resources into oxygen, water and fuel.
Credit: PISCES


A prototype robot for lunar prospecting called Scarab from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute is to carry experimental resource processing gear in Hawaii test program.
Credit: Carnegie Mellon

TO THE MOON VIA HAWAII
By Leonard David

It could be a tough mental picture to conjure up. Imagine the lush garden paradise of Hawaii serving as a double for the crater-pocked and bleak Moon.

That’s exactly what is being planned by the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo. Scientists and engineers there are delving into new technologies and techniques to sustain human presence on the Moon and beyond.

The central idea behind PISCES is basic: How best to “live off the land” – an ability to help cut the umbilical of life support from the Earth as humans move outward to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations.

It’s called In Situ Resource Utilization, better known in space circles as ISRU. New technologies are being crafted that can produce life support consumables, like oxygen, water, as well as rocket propellants. Even heat and power, materials for construction and manufacturing can be made on-the-spot at the Moon via ISRU equipment.

In returning humans to the Moon and placing footprints on Mars, it will be prohibitive – some say impossible – for crews to haul everything they need to support a sustained presence on distant worlds.

Lunar-like landscape

Planners at PISCES are readying a set of ISRU experiments for trial-run later this year. It turns out that the volcanic soils and lunar-like landscape on the Big Island of Hawaii are ideal to help hone ISRU skills and equipment – including robot testing and perhaps eventually putting in place a simulated lunar outpost.
A favored Moon analog spot for experiments is about a mile from the Hale Pohaku visitors’ center at the 9,000 foot level on Mauna Kea, given a permit go-ahead that is in process, explains Frank Schowengerdt, professor of physics and director of PISCES at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo.
The ISRU testing shows NASA’s strong and almost immediate interest in PISCES, says Schowengerdt. “But as exciting as these projects are, they are just the beginning of what PISCES is to become,” he emphasizes.

PISCES is being viewed as more than a testing facility, Schowengerdt foresees, viewing it also as an international research and education center dedicated to learning how to sustain life on the Moon and elsewhere in the solar system.

According to Gerald Sanders, NASA’s project manager for ISRU at the space agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, one experiment to be assessed in Hawaii is the Regolith & Environment Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction equipment - dubbed RESOLVE.

It will be carried by the Scarab rover, a drilling and science rover platform for lunar exploration designed by The Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

PILOT processing gear

The implementation of ISRU for exploration can support and enable lunar science objectives “of the Moon”…“on the Moon”…and “from the Moon”, Saunders points out. But to put such a concept to the test, science instruments and measurements are critical to understanding lunar resources, their distribution, and how to extract and process these resources with the minimum of development and implementation risk for human exploration, he adds.

Yet another demonstration test slated for Hawaii makes use of the Pre-cursor Insitu Lunar Oxygen Testbed, or PILOT, says Larry Clark, program manager for in situ resource utilization at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, near Denver, Colorado.

PILOT melds an autonomous excavator, a mock lunar lander, a bucket and lift system, along with processing gear that recycles hydrogen to make more oxygen.

Observes Clark: “Oxygen represents the largest commodity that must be replenished for human habitation on the Moon and Mars.”

“When it is fully developed, PISCES will be an intellectual leader of thought among the space exploration community, built on partnerships between industry, academia and government, and will ‘put Hawai’i on the map’ in the geographical center of the spacefaring nations of the Pacific Rim,” Schowengerdt suggests, adding that several of those nations are engaged in orchestrating missions to the Moon.

By the way, this is not the first time that Hawaii has doubled for lunar landscape. NASA taught moonwalking crews there. In fact, of all their training experiences, the Apollo astronauts said Hawaii was most like the Moon.