Moebius Sail

We deliver in space

NASA International Space Apps Challenge

I3P - Torino, 2019-10-20

The concept

• Why?  (Rare Earth Elements are scarce on the earth and therefore very expensive) 
• What? Source Rare Earth Elements on the moon and carry to earth
• How?

The proposal

• Lunar Hub   
• Spacecraft on a free rentry orbit
• Atmospheric rentry pod

Rare Earth Elements

This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission.

It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.

Red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene, detected by absorption of 2.0-micrometer infrared light, REE.

MISSION

• Lunar free return trajectory

PROBLEMS

• Effects of solar radiation
• Jupiter influence

SOLUTION

• Solar sails

How?

The spacecraft

Initial phase

1. On orbit assembly of the spacecraft;
2. Free rentry orbit insertion;
3. Freight of the resource to the moon;
4. Building of the facility on the moon.

Main phase

• Estraction and in situ resource preprocessing;
• Pods printing with regolith used for protect the ore during Earth rentry;

Future Proposals

• Near Earth Object survey

NEO survey equipment integrate in the avionic bay of the spacecraft or some cubesat 6U equipted with Ion EP or FEEP for orbit maintenance.

• LEO stockpile

Unvaluable ore, like Alluminium, Iron and Titanium can be harvested from the Moon surface and stockpiled in LEO for future orbital activities.

The Moebius-Sail team

• Riccardo Salgarella
• Gianpaolo Macario
• Gianfranco Poncini
• Carlo Di Costanza
• Demetrio Scuncia
• Nicolo' Lombardo