Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s working with partners in Luxembourg on a campaign called Project Oasis, which aims to identify and take advantage of valuable resources on the moon.
The project’s first mission, known as Oasis-1, will send a small satellite into lunar orbit to map reserves of water ice, helium-3, radionuclides, rare earth elements, precious metals and other materials that could be used by space settlers or sent back to Earth.
“Once we know what’s really there and how to access it, everything changes,” Pat Remias, vice president for advanced concepts and enterprise engineering at Blue Origin, said today in a news release. “Project Oasis creates the foundation for a thriving space economy that benefits everyone, including the billions of individuals on Earth who will benefit from space-based resources.”
Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin has already been working on a project called Blue Alchemist, which focuses on technologies that can process moon dirt to produce the components for solar cells and transmission wires. Another promising avenue involves turning deposits of water ice into drinkable water — and turning that H2O into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellant.
Such technologies could be applied broadly to in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU, on the moon as well as on Mars and in asteroid mining operations.
