Deep Space Industries Inc. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: H1.01
Deep Space Industries Inc. — SBIR Phase I award from National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- Amount
- $124,508
- Agency
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- H1.01
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- TX
- Period
- 2015-06-17 → 2015-12-17
Description
We will design, prototype, and test a variety of asteroid simulants needed to validate most aspects of asteroid ISRU processes. These include physical simulants for excavation, transfer, and preparation (including comminution); chemical/mineralogical/volatile simulants for processing tests such as volatiles extraction, metals extraction, and oxygen production; and simulants to evaluate scientific and commercial instrumentation. The need for task-specific asteroid simulants is illustrated by the history of ill-designed and ill-applied lunar simulants, and current practices for asteroid simulants, which are marked by ad-hoc improvisation that frequently results in an inability to compare results among experiments or reliably repeat experiments for confirmation.