The 2023 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate technologies that will enable the production of lunar infrastructure from ISRU-derived metals found on the Moon. Teams were invited to submit proposals for that focused on any part of the metal product production pipeline* from prospecting to testing. Key infrastructure products desired included storage vessels for liquids and gases, extrusions, pipes, power cables, and supporting structures (i.e., roads, landing pads, etc.).
*Exclusions: Proposals that focus on drilling, excavation, or transportation will NOT be considered for selection in the 2023 BIG Idea Challenge. The challenge is not looking for concepts that focus on the recycling of landed assets into feedstock or metal products.
University of Utah wins the Artemis Award!
University of Utah during the poster session.
ARTEMIS AWARD WINNER
University of Utah with Powder Metallurgy Research Laboratory
Production of Steel from Lunar Regolith through Carbonyl Iron Refining (CIR)
Advisors: Dr. Hong Y. Sohn, Dr. Michael F. Simpson, Dr. Michael L. Free
BEST VERIFICATION DEMONSTRATION
Colorado School of Mines
Lunar Alloy Metal Production Plant (LAMPP)
Advisors: Dr. Christopher Dreyer, Dr. George Sowers
BIG PICTURE AWARD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
with Honeybee Robotics
Artemis Steelworks: Advancing Reactor Technologies for Electrolytic Manufacturing
of In-Situ Steel
Advisors: Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, Dr. Antoine Allanore, Dr. Martin Culpepper, Dr. Olivier De Weck, George Lordos
EDISON AWARD
Missouri University
of Science and Technology
Lunar In-Situ Aluminum Production Through Molten Salt Electrolysis (LISAP-MSE)
Advisors: Dr. Daoru Han, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, Dr. Fateme Rezaei, Dr. David Bayless, Dr. William Schonberg, Dr. Daniel Stutts
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AWARD
Northwestern University
with Wearifi, Inc.; Rexnord Aerospace;
QuesTek Innovations LLC; and ANSYS, Inc.
ACRE: Autonomous Casting RovEr
Advisor: Dr. Ian McCue
INNOVATION AWARD
Pennsylvania State University
with RFHIC and Jacobs Space Exploration Group
Development of the Smelting with Microwave
Energy for Lunar Technologies (SMELT)
System for In-Situ Resource Processing
Advisors: Dr. Sven Bilén, Dr. Aleksandra Radlińska
PATH-TO-FLIGHT AWARD
University of North Texas with
Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Processes Institute, UNT;
Enabled Engineering
Solid-state Integrated Manufacturing Process for Lunar Environment (SIMPLE)
Advisors: Dr. Rajiv S. Mishra, Dr. Hector Siller, Dr. Ravi Sankar Haridas
