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<p>Sustained lunar base construction and habitation will require large-scale oxygen production from regolith, yet the upstream feedstock-preparation chain linking excavation, transfer and particle-size conditioning remains insufficiently characterised at system level under operational conditions. Here we report results from MoLES3, a physically separated architecture comprising a teleoperated mobile rover with a four-joint arm executing autonomous excavation and a stationary vibratory beneficiation unit, demonstrated at ESA’s LUNA facility as a 1 g operational analogue for future lunar base resource plants. For the tested architecture and operating conditions, transfer loss was the dominant recoverable inefficiency in the feedstock chain, while beneficiation contributed only a minor fraction of total system energy. Aggregate arm loading varies more strongly with entry alignment and trajectory selection than with simulant resistance, and vibration power determines whether separation completes within the operational window. For the architecture and operating conditions tested, these findings suggest that transfer interface design, excavation trajectory planning and beneficiation power selection are important co-design variables influencing feedstock-preparation performance in the tested system. The presented 1 g operational baseline provides experimentally grounded design implications for future integrated lunar resource-plant studies.</p>

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Integrated robotic feedstock preparation for lunar oxygen production: system-level efficiency and design implications from analogue trials

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月4日

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  • Sharun Arumugam,
  • Christopher Bishop,
  • Kwai Wa Tse,
  • Danish Khan,
  • Paul Dominick Baniqued,
  • Johnny Ionita,
  • Lewis Naylor,
  • Mohamed G. B. Atia,
  • Simon Watson,
  • James Kell,
  • John Brotherhood,
  • Marti Morta Garriga,
  • Kate Smith

摘要

Sustained lunar base construction and habitation will require large-scale oxygen production from regolith, yet the upstream feedstock-preparation chain linking excavation, transfer and particle-size conditioning remains insufficiently characterised at system level under operational conditions. Here we report results from MoLES3, a physically separated architecture comprising a teleoperated mobile rover with a four-joint arm executing autonomous excavation and a stationary vibratory beneficiation unit, demonstrated at ESA’s LUNA facility as a 1 g operational analogue for future lunar base resource plants. For the tested architecture and operating conditions, transfer loss was the dominant recoverable inefficiency in the feedstock chain, while beneficiation contributed only a minor fraction of total system energy. Aggregate arm loading varies more strongly with entry alignment and trajectory selection than with simulant resistance, and vibration power determines whether separation completes within the operational window. For the architecture and operating conditions tested, these findings suggest that transfer interface design, excavation trajectory planning and beneficiation power selection are important co-design variables influencing feedstock-preparation performance in the tested system. The presented 1 g operational baseline provides experimentally grounded design implications for future integrated lunar resource-plant studies.