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Water is vital for supporting future space explorations. For a permanent crewed base on the moon to be possible, astronauts will need a reliable supply of water for drinking and growing food, as well as oxygen for air and hydrogen for fuel.

Harnessing in-situ resources on the Moon reduces the need for expensive and risky shipments from earth. In the polar regions of the Moon, about 5.6% of regolith (the Moon’s soil) is water frozen as ice. However, it contains contaminants preventing its use unless it is purified.

To help solve this problem, the UK Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and Impact Canada have launched the £1.2m Aqualunar Challenge. It invites global innovators to design a water purification system that can extract and purify water from the Moon’s regolith.

The UNSW Aussienauts are part of a team led by Interstellar Mapping, a multinational space company, that have been selected as one of the ten finalists in the UK Aqualunar Challenge. They entered the competition with the Static Water Extraction System (SWES).

“SWES works by depositing regolith into a funnel, where a heating element first sublimates contaminants at a lower temperature. Then the regolith is heated again to 200 Kelvin to sublimate and extract water,” says Peter Johnson, fifth-year UNSW Aerospace Engineering student and co-supervisor of the team.

“Due to the challenges of operating in the lunar environment, our approach focuses on simplicity. We have eliminated the need for any moving parts and essentially have gravity do the work for us. The design also minimises power requirements and volume, which is crucial for landing systems on the Moon,” he says.

As a finalist, the team have been awarded £30,000 to advance their concept to Technology Readiness Level 3 (TRL3) by January 2025, before a winner and runners-up are announced in Spring 2025.

“TRL3 is essentially about proving that the concept works in practice. We need to show that the regular flow and heating processes can achieve the intended results,” says Peter.

“One of the challenges we face is the chemistry of lunar regolith, which is extremely abrasive. In the next phase of the program, we’ll be developing lunar regolith simulant, which will be used for testing,” says William Collins, third-year UNSW Mining Engineering student.

The team will also conduct engineering analyses of SWES and perform tests on the heating elements to ensure the system can operate autonomously for extended periods without blockage.

“We’re working with our UK partners to see if we can test the system in a dirty thermal vacuum chamber, an environment that simulates the lunar conditions,” says Nick Barnett, CEO of Interstellar Mapping and supervisor of the team.

In previous years, the UNSW Aussienauts have achieved significant milestones, including 3rd place in 2022 and 2nd place in 2023 in the Over the Dusty Moon challenge. In 2023, they secured 1st place in the World Mining Congress' 2023 hackathon to develop a lunar rover.

“Having experience in dealing with regolith, designing systems on the Moon, and testing them, definitely gives us an advantage as we enter this challenge,” says Justin Fang, third-year UNSW Aerospace Engineering student.

“When you consider in-situ resource utilisation on the Moon, it involves several interconnected steps. In the Over the Dusty Moon Challenge, we focused on transporting material from a hopper to a processing plant. Now, we’re concentrating on the processing stage itself. The rover component is concerned with the initial mining and deposition of regolith, which feeds into the system we’re developing,” says Peter.

“The Australian Space Agency’s Trailblazer program has a commercial payload planned for one of NASA’s Artemis missions that involves using a Rover to collect regolith, which connects with the work we’re doing here,” he says.

Among the ten finalist teams, the UNSW Aussienauts are the only team with undergraduate students as part of their team.

“We’re hoping to bring the students to the UK to do a tour of the UK Space Agency, partner universities, space companies and facilities. They are going to see opportunities which currently don’t exist in Australia. Then, they can bring those skill sets back and help further develop the sector,” says Nick Barnett.

“My main goal in joining this competition is to gain hands-on experience that goes beyond what’s achievable in coursework. It offers a unique opportunity to apply my skills in a real-world setting, where the quality of your work really matters,” says Connor Duigan, third-year UNSW Aerospace Engineering student.

“I enjoy the challenge. Other teams might have more experience, but our hard work can make up for that and more. We beat over 20 teams to make the top ten, and I’m very proud of that,” he says.

The 2024 Aussienauts team members are Peter Johnson (co-supervisor, former team lead), Justin Fang (team lead), Finn Prince, William Collins, Connor Duigan, Sophie Wu, Jack Xin, and Fabian Sukumar. The team is supervised by Associate Professor Binghao Li, Dr Chengguo Zhang and Nick Barnett.