Remote operation skills developed by Australia's mining equipment, technology and services sector may someday help NASA support human life on the moon.

Mining companies' ability to run the world's largest iron ore operations in Western Australia's Pilbara from almost 2,000 km away in Perth caught the attention of Pamela Melroy, now deputy administrator of NASA. Melroy, a retired US Air Force officer and NASA astronaut, started the Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth (AROSE) consortium to leverage Australian miners' expertise for the benefit of the burgeoning space sector.

Private and government investments are increasing globally to exploit space resources. But innovation to explore for minerals on the moon is still nascent as terrestrial technology is often not applicable in space, where the usual rules of gravity do not apply.

Austmine, an association of mining equipment, technology and services (METS) companies, is working with Melroy's AROSE consortium to encourage Australian companies to submit ideas for low-weight technologies to help NASA map the moon's surface or subsurface over at least several hundred kilometers.

Three companies will be chosen to discuss their ideas with NASA in California on May 21–22. NASA wants to hear how to address three of its key challenges: detecting and assessing minerals on the moon for off-world manufacturing; reducing geological uncertainty by the fusion of multi-sensor platforms; and off-world simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Geological survey officials from the US, Canada and Australia will also be in the room.

"We know that we're going to want to find, measure and build things [in space]," Jonathan Stock, director of the US Geological Survey (USGS) Innovation Center for Earth Sciences, said April 3 during an Austmine webinar focused on opportunities for METS companies.

"We think that there's a great deal of capability [Down Under] and it seems worthwhile; before NASA tries to invent its own version of SLAM, let's go explore what the community in Australia has," Stock said. "That's what will lead [to the ability] to essentially measure and build [some] of the components it will take for humans to live off-world and not have to do all the work themselves."

The initiative is "an opportunity to put our best foot forward, to show what we have to offer and just as we have transformed mining, to be part of transforming how we may live in the future for the benefit of humanity," Christine Gibbs Stewart, CEO of Austmine, told the webinar. Gibbs Stewart stressed that the initiative does not comprise a formal request for a proposal by NASA, an immediate purchase order or committed funding.

Michelle Keegan, director for resources and space for AROSE. Source: Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth.

Lunar economy

The opportunity for Australian METS companies to visit NASA's California base came about after AROSE member Rio Tinto Group invited Stock and a group of NASA staff to a site visit in 2023, Michelle Keegan, AROSE director for resources and space, told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Australia's remote operations capability in mining underpinned its participation as a founding member of the Artemis Accords in 2020, Keegan said. The pact established a practical set of principles to guide space exploration cooperation among nations participating in NASA's lunar exploration plans.

The US and Australia agreed in October 2021 to add a lunar rover to a future moon mission. Rio Tinto is providing "knowledge transfer" of terrestrial robotic and automation capabilities to support AROSE's lunar rover development process, according to a March 2023 statement from AROSE.

"We're talking really about future presence off-world where there is a lunar economy," said Keegan, who was with Rio Tinto when the company developed its "mine of the future" concept and designed its related Pilbara Remote Operations Centre in the early 2000s.

Technology challenges

A key to starting a lunar economy is to detect, measure and map the moon's zirconium, barium, fluorine and sodium needed to manufacture high-bandwidth optical cables, which are essential to building all future infrastructure in space, Austmine's Gibbs Stewart said. However, current technology to "characterize the moon" is inadequate.

"[The USGS] really [wants] to understand what minerals are on the moon from a more holistic perspective, with the ultimate aim to allow manufacturing in space," Gibbs Stewart told Commodity Insights.

Some mapping technologies used by miners depend on being airborne, and "systems like drones will not work in many of the off-world settings with little to no atmosphere," Keegan said. Some of the scanners used to detect minerals will also be "difficult or impossible to use" in space.

"That race for space is kind of accelerating, and the lunar economy is being designed," Keegan told Commodity Insights. "The [mining] value chain starts at exploration and goes all the way through to remediation. So we hope that over time, we'll be able to showcase the capabilities [to NASA] that we've built over many years that could be all combined to create a presence in the future lunar economy."