Conceptual Design of a Lunar Demonstration Payload for In Situ Water Extraction based on the LUWEX Project

Kurzfassung

The objective of this thesis is to develop a conceptual design for a lunar in-situ water production demonstration payload, extending upon the LUWEX project. To do so, the current state of the art of relevant technologies is reviewed. Furthermore, activities of a typical space system engineering process are assessed and a suitable structure of tasks for the following mission and system design phase is established. These phases involve the mission definition and design, including setting the mission scope, defining mission objectives, requirements and constraints, identifying and trading different mission alternatives and concluding a representative reference mission scenario. During system design, high level functionalities as well as system requirements are defined and main design drivers are identified, focusing on the capturing and extraction subsystems. Upon this, a set of possible system design alternatives are provided and evaluated using trade studies, leading to the selection of the most promising designs. Finally, the individual designs are combined and a first iteration system design for an integrated lunar water production payload is presented, using CAD as additional visualization tool.