>South Korea plans to transform the former mining city of Taebaek into a national testing ground for lunar resource exploration, leveraging the city’s abandoned coal mines as proving grounds for space mining technologies that could one day help extract helium-3 and rare metals from the moon’s surface.
>This initiative was highlighted last Friday, when the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) conducted a demonstration inside a defunct tunnel of the former Hamtae mine in Taebaek, Gangwon Province. The event showcased rover prototypes equipped with autonomous navigation, soil analysis, and excavation technologies – tools that could eventually be deployed on the moon to collect valuable resources.
>Three unmanned rovers maneuvered through steep, uneven slopes during the demonstration by using wheels capable of 360-degree rotation. One rover emitted a laser toward the ground, with a monitor immediately displaying the composition and proportion of elements in the soil. Another rover extended a thumbnail-sized scoop, gently collected one gram of sand from a rough surface and stored it inside an onboard compartment. The same procedure is expected to be replicated 380,000 kilometers away on the lunar surface, where just one gram of soil could yield future energy resources for humanity.
phovos on
Literally the only thing to mine on the moon is Tritium — its quite literally the earth but cleaved off and spun around up in space for a billionish years — what do you think it would have that EARTH ITSELF doesn’t have?
michael-65536 on
I don’t think wheeled rovers are going to get it done. I’m holding out for spiderbots.
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From the article
>South Korea plans to transform the former mining city of Taebaek into a national testing ground for lunar resource exploration, leveraging the city’s abandoned coal mines as proving grounds for space mining technologies that could one day help extract helium-3 and rare metals from the moon’s surface.
>This initiative was highlighted last Friday, when the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) conducted a demonstration inside a defunct tunnel of the former Hamtae mine in Taebaek, Gangwon Province. The event showcased rover prototypes equipped with autonomous navigation, soil analysis, and excavation technologies – tools that could eventually be deployed on the moon to collect valuable resources.
>Three unmanned rovers maneuvered through steep, uneven slopes during the demonstration by using wheels capable of 360-degree rotation. One rover emitted a laser toward the ground, with a monitor immediately displaying the composition and proportion of elements in the soil. Another rover extended a thumbnail-sized scoop, gently collected one gram of sand from a rough surface and stored it inside an onboard compartment. The same procedure is expected to be replicated 380,000 kilometers away on the lunar surface, where just one gram of soil could yield future energy resources for humanity.
Literally the only thing to mine on the moon is Tritium — its quite literally the earth but cleaved off and spun around up in space for a billionish years — what do you think it would have that EARTH ITSELF doesn’t have?
I don’t think wheeled rovers are going to get it done. I’m holding out for spiderbots.