Problematic: Scientific importance of lunar material.

The collection of lunar material is characterized by having the greatest importance in what has to do with the lunar exploration, since with this one can determine several vital factors that can help identify problems or future benefits for humans on the moon. The material analyzed helps each time that humans understand more the lunar characteristics and therefore can learn more about how a permanent colony on the moon could if you take advantage of all that it can offer.

The current processes of collecting mineral data in lunar material, whether dust dust, rocks or rock fragments, are highly invasive and inefficient in contrast to their scientific use, thus generating economic and scientific losses in everything related to the exploration and colonization of the moon.

Study minerals

All rocks have great scientific value as they help unravel the history of the Moon and planet Earth, but anything that can have mineral bodies such as:

• Ilmenita
• Hidroxilo

It would have significant importance and a very high scientific and engineering value due to its great contribution to future extra-planetary missions.

Material Relevance

The ilmenite would be of a particularly high value for a possible mining, ISRU; as is the fundamental hydroxyl for 3d printing of regolith or for oxygen extraction.

Most lunar samples are still considered extremely important. Lunar samples containing hydroxyl are very important, as it helps with the Artemis project and could facilitate space travel by breaking down hydrogen and oxygen. These rocks containing hydroxyl were found in the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.

Material extraction areas

The ARTEMIS landing zone of current primary interest is located at the south pole of the Moon in an area near a permanently shaded region, where there are only a few hours of eclipse per year; This type of objective could allow the development of a sustainable human presence while ARTEMIS continues its work without the challenges of lunar nights (temperatures up to -173 degrees Celsius) and with almost continuous solar energy. Certainly, there are a lot of human landing zones that the previous programs (Constellation) identified thanks to missions like LRO and Kaguya of Japan, and many have enormous scientific value. But having a place to go, as an area of the south pole with almost continuous sunlight could be a great facilitator for a long stay for humans on the Moon.

What is FocalRocks?

It is a data collection system, specifically of the minerals that make up the lunar rocks.

It is a non-invasive method that helps to obtain reliable data of the different types of lunar material, using a method known as confocal laser microscopy since this is mainly composed of a high resolution laser microscope, a scanning electromechanical system and a digital image processing system; This together provides a broader field of data analysis since it takes a large part of the material in focus, making the sample highly reliable without the need to continuously measure the same sample.

Components

• Laser: allows the stimulation of fluorescent dyes with a very intense light.
• scanning system: it allows the stimulation not to be in the entire sample at the same time, but only in very small areas, the stimulation and reception area is moving throughout the entire sample (scanning) so that, in a given time, scan time, the entire sample has been probed.

Structure

The operation of the confocal laser microscope is very similar to that of the epifluorescence microscope. Its main advantage is that it allows to obtain higher quality images through spatial filtering techniques that eliminate the light that comes from unfocused planes. This allows to control the depth of field and, in addition, to obtain series of images of the specimen by changing the plane of focus. Optical sections of 0.5 to 1.5 microns of fluorescent specimens of a thickness of approximately 50 microns or more can be obtained.

In this type of microscope, the light source is a laser that illuminates the preparation at different heights, generating optical sections. One of its fundamental components is the pinhole, which filters the light coming from out of focus planes.

Figure 1: CLSM scheme.

Operating process

A confocal scanning laser microscope coexists three light sources:

• Standard visible light lamp of any microscope that allows us to locate samples in bright field or phase contrast.
• Mercury vapor lamp. It is usually used to observe the samples and locate those areas of interest to be scanned in low quality conditions.
• To be. The most used is the argon-krypton that gives three output lines. It is possible to simultaneously mount several laser sources. In installations where there is more than one laser, the second is usually one that emits in the ultraviolet.

Figure 2. Confocal Laser Scanning Module.

Associated Techniques

3D reconstruction

Recently, with the increased power of computer image processing, an image reconstruction tool called decombolution was developed to address focal series of image transmission. The results were non-distorted 3D representations.

3D animation

A major limitation of CLSM is the fact that more samples require more treatment to be visible. All steps such as melting or cooling the auto fluorescence, which tend to be designed in liquids in the temperature rooms can result in effects such as swelling and solubilization of components.

Method of analysis material selection

For the selection of material of high importance, a method of measurement by zones was chosen which can be separated from each other at a distance of 200 meters since this distance provides a margin of measurement for humans quite large and thus be able to cover a distance considerable by mission.

It is expected to have 10 samples separated by 200 meters each, this will give a data collection area of around 1000 square meters, a relatively large area considering the value of the various samples to be obtained in each of these sections.

Figure 3. Generalized sampling area.

Each section will have to be analyzed by an astronaut who, by means of a drill that will be equipped with special bits that in turn will have specific sensors to detect mineral molecules, essentially ilmenite and hydroxyl, depending on the mineral analyzed by means of the censor, the drill It will automatically select a digital label that will identify the mineral in that section by sending this data to the earth so that future ARTEMIS or other unmanned missions can directly get to collect rocks of high scientific value and analyze them through the FocalRocks because of this The method is intended to lower mission costs and eventually reduce the exposure time of astronauts on the surface of the Moon.

Consequently, this same method can be used in different lunar areas simply by needing a single manned mission to label the sections and then have probes that carry measuring instruments such as the CLSM and the XCT, directly helping future explorations to others. stars.

Transport: Displacement Earth – Moon

Space transport is one of the biggest problems in what has to do with space exploration since it is the main link so that all human ingenuity can reach its destination in order to advance as a species and discover new worlds.

The ideal transport to implement the FocalRocks project and that this can generate benefits not only for the exploration of the Moon but also for future missions to Mars would be the ARTEMIS mission that is projected to be on the way to the Moon in the year 2024, giving us thus a relatively economical and sustainable method in the long term given that the payload of the SLS rocket is much greater compared to the payload that could be carried by the rocket of the Apollo missions, Saturn V.

FocalRocks module transport method

The method used to transport the FocalRocks project module can be carried out in two situations, which may be at different stages of the mission either before the mission or during the mission.

Mainly it is expected that the CLSM modules will be transported to the specific sections chosen by scientists previously by a rover built not only to carry this module but to do multiple tasks such as excavation without having to design another rover for each of the tasks since the FocalRocks system will be modular and can be carried by the rover or an astronaut simply by connecting it to a sufficient power source for its operation.

Figure 4. CLSM module still under development.

Data transmission

For the transmission of the analyzed data, the resources that the base will have in the specific cases will be taken into account, depending on the serial mission or the ORION capsule or, alternatively, the rover which manipulates the CLSM module, and when it has obtained the Data necessary for the required analysis for each mineral will be transmitted with the TCP protocol, this protocol helps us so that the samples do not necessarily have to go to the ground for their effective analysis but that these can be analyzed on the Moon directly because this protocol It has data retransmission and ordering, with this it gives the feasibility and effectiveness that no important data will be lost through transmission.

Energy: Power supply

Energy is very important since without this one could not carry out any scientific analysis process, therefore, the energy feeding model was chosen by means of ultra efficient solar panels in order to provide sufficient energy to both the main stations and to the rovers that adapt the CLSM module for the correct implementation of the FocalRocks project.

Components and Energy Efficiency

The solar panels to be installed in each of the main methods of transport of payload and data transport are 2 mono crystalline solar panels of 4 Watts of power, these will allow depending on the area in which the lunar module or conveyor is It will produce enough energy to power the measuring instruments giving a total power of approximately 5 Watts per day, taking into account the average conditions of the Moon.

Figure 5. Mono crystalline solar panel.

It is taken into account that the conditions of the Moon are not good as far as lunar dust is concerned. The moon dust is glassy and finer than talcum powder and has ferromagnetic properties, there are also molten particles of 1-30 μm in diameter called agglutinated. Eventually solar energy systems will be affected by this dust, resulting in the system producing less and less energy and the day that no longer produces.

There is a solar panel cleaning system developed by the US Department of Energy that is based on three-phase static electricity on the panel, this means that the upper protection panel is covered by thin conductors that, as the name says, has three alternating phases of static electricity and what they do is push the particles to the inclined side. All of the above together can provide a panel cleaning of about 90 and 95% cleaning per year without having to manually intervene the panel.

Figure 6. Electrostatic solar panel coating.

Alternative Solutions

Alternative solutions are taken into account for the analysis of lunar rock data and their respective assessment, if in some lunar environment or on another planet there are conditions in which the FocalRocks project does not work properly there are methods which can be used in a similar way which are:

XRD: X-ray diffraction. This technique is generally used for the evaluation and analysis of pulverized material or for individual crystals. It would be impossible to perform if the samples were not first excavated making this method highly invasive for him, study material.

XCT: X-ray computed tomography. This technique has the characteristic of seeing that it composes the interior of the sample material, yet this method requires some preparation and manipulation of the sample, but it is minimally invasive compared to the XRD.