NASA Data Helps Commercial Space Plan Living Off Our Moon

The barren lunar landscape contains important resources such as water, iron, and titanium, but extracting and processing them requires special equipment, and where those resources are found dictates landing and mining decisions. Lunar Station Corp. helps clients understand environmental factors for any location on the Moon by leveraging 60 years of lunar data, combining disparate data from different sensors used by NASA and other space agencies as a critical first step.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company used NASA's Ames Stereo Pipeline, an open-source code that automatically processes satellite, rover, and historical images to create 3D models revealing rock placement and elevation. To address the largely unknown availability of in-situ lunar water, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite deliberately crashed its upper stage into the Moon's South Pole in 2009; examination of the resulting plume revealed water ice. Lunar Station's MoonHacker program uses a proprietary geospatial analytics platform and advanced algorithms to fuse all lunar data in NASA's Planetary Data System, identifying indicators for shallow pits of lunar water and enabling site selection for landing pads, optimal rover paths, and communication relay strategies for polar or far-side locations where Earth isn't visible. The Radiation Simulator subjects a digital twin of a rover or satellite to radiation en route or at the mission site to determine required protection.

These innovations exemplify NASA's Technology Transfer program within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate, which uses space-based solutions to improve life on Earth. NASA has documented everyday benefits of space technology through its Spinoff publication for 50 years, and Lunar Station's work helps commercial companies with mission planning, including scientific research for mining operations.