Mines Center for Space Resources selected to participate in NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute

GOLDEN, Colo., June 26, 2014 – The Colorado School of Mines Center for Space Resources is partnering with the Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres, and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) led by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder, which has been awarded a five-year, $6 million NASA grant.

Researchers at the Center for Space Resources will conduct dust impact modeling and in-situ resource utilization experimental work. Other research partners include international collaborators from Belgium, Canada, Germany and Russia.

The research to be conducted at IMPACT will contribute to safeguarding interplanetary missions against dust and radiation hazard, and sustaining robotic and/or human presence once a destination is reached, be it the Moon, near-Earth objects or the moons of Mars.  

The Mines research effort led by professors Angel Abbud-Madrid, Christopher Dreyer and George Gilmer, will guide the design and operation of mechanical systems interacting with regolith (a layer of unconsolidated rock, soil and dust on top of solid rock).

"In the future, these mechanical systems will excavate, drill, and extract the necessary resources to sustain our presence at any of the possible planetary destinations," said Abbud-Madrid, director of Mines’ Center for Space Resources.

For more information on this project, see the IMPACT website.

Contact:

Karen Gilbert, Director of Public Relations, Colorado School of Mines / 303-273-3541 / kgilbert@mines.edu
Kathleen Morton, Communications Coordinator, Colorado School of Mines / 303-273-3088 / kmorton@mines.edu