Review of Water Capturing Devices for Lunar ISRU

Kurzfassung

The use of resources present on celestial bodies, known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), is becoming more and more important in space exploration due to the high cost of launching mass into orbit. ISRU would enable long-term manned operations and permanent (robotic) presence on extra-terrestrial bodies. Water is considered to be one of the most important resources for further space exploration and is currently investigated for extraction and purification on the future manned Lunar base envisioned around 2025. Previous research focused on the extraction of water from regolith but little work has been done to find ways on how to capture and liquefy the water vapour after its extraction.