Penn State submission to NASA - Break the Ice, lunar mining challenge 2022

The Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences propose a bucket-wheel excavator variant for lunar regolith mining for the NASA-funded competition. Eight buckets installed in series on a large wheel scoop the regolith and store it temporarily in an onboard chamber. The regolith will be secured within the chamber to alleviate the lunar ice's sublimation into the space's hard vacuum. Low availability and utilization values allow the excavator-transporter to spend a lot of time preparing for operations. Onboard sensors feeding information to computer programs will allow the machine to operate autonomously in the dark region of the lunar south pole where the presence of water was recently established.