Morgan Hendry

Melt. Extract. Fuel. Repeat. 🚀 To build an affordable, sustainable presence on the Moon, we must learn to live off the land. Air Pioneer is a scalable, modular system that creates purified oxygen to reduce dependency on supplies from Earth. Using Moon-extracted oxygen for propellant, fuel cells, and breathing reduces our lunar landers’ load by many metric tons of mass. Launching less mass from Earth lowers the cost of our Moon base, fueling a future cislunar economy. 🌕

Melt. Extract. Breathe. Repeat. 🧑‍🚀 From Moon dust to fresh air, our Air Pioneer technology turns lunar regolith into breathable oxygen, ready for astronauts returning to the Moon. At our Space Resources Center of Excellence in LA, we developed a reactor (left) that melts regolith simulant and passes a current through it to release oxygen and other gases. The gases flow into the purification system (right) and emerge as medical- and propellant-grade oxygen. A flight-qualified Air Pioneer at this same scale could provide the first breath of life for a sustainable Moon base. 🌕

Lunar Permanence will require using resources on the Moon rather than hauling them from Earth. Our in-situ resource utilization system extracts oxygen from lunar regolith to create breathable air for astronauts and propellant for refueling landers and fuel cells. It also produces iron, aluminum, silicon, construction materials, and even solar power systems. The materials for a Moon base are produced right where they’re needed, and at much lower cost than being brought from Earth.