Water from Lunar Regolith: Reduction by Hydrogen for a Small-scale Demonstration of in situ Resource Utilisation for the Moon

Water is a critical resource required for long-duration space exploration missions, and in situ water production will be key to enabling a sustained human presence on and around the Moon. There are two potential sources of lunar water: from frozen ice deposits in polar craters; and from the extraction of oxygen from regolith. The Package for Resource Observation and in Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Commercial exploitation and transportation (PROSPECT) will be used to investigate both sources of water when it is flown on the Luna-27 mission to a high-latitude region of the Moon. The aim of this work was to determine whether a static system, such as that found on the onboard Sample Processing and Analysis suite (ProSPA), could be used to perform hydrogen reduction of lunar regolith to produce water. If successful, it would be one of the first in situ resource utilisation (ISRU) demonstrations to be performed on the Moon. To achieve this aim, the movement of gases in a static system was modelled and then trialled experimentally on a breadboard, where ilmenite, a common lunar mineral, was successfully reduced. A second breadboard with improved thermal control was developed and evaluated, and then used to perform ilmenite reduction experiments where the reaction temperature and hydrogen pressure were optimised to produce the highest yields of water. Finally, the optimised procedure was applied to the reduction of lunar-like and lunar materials, including a lunar highland simulant, crushed lunar meteorite, and two Apollo soil samples. Water was successfully produced from all samples in a four hour reaction. The highest yields were produced from the high-ilmenite-bearing 10084 Apollo soil, resulting in an average yield of 0.94 wt % O2. The results of this study suggest that hydrogen reduction of regolith in a static system like ProSPA should be feasible

Inclusivity in the Education of Scientific Imagination

Scientists imagine constantly. They do this when generating research problems, designing experiments, interpreting data, troubleshooting, drafting papers and presentations, and giving feedback. But when and how do scientists learn how to use imagination? Across six years of ethnographic research, it has been found that advanced career scientists feel comfortable using and discussing imagination, while graduate and undergraduate students of science often do not. In addition, members of marginalized and vulnerable groups tend to express negative views about the strength of their own imaginations, and the general usefulness of imagination in science. After introducing these findings and discussing the typical relationship between a scientist and their imagination across a career, we argue that reducing the number or power of active imaginations in science is epistemically counterproductive, and suggest a number of ways to bring imagination back into science in a more inclusive way, especially through courses on imagination for scientists, role models, and exemplar-based learning

The Role of Imagination in Making Water from Moon Rocks: How Scientists Use Imagination to Break Constraints on Imagination

Scientists recognize the necessity of imagination for solving tough problems. But how does the cognitive faculty responsible for daydreaming help in solving scientific problems? Philosophers claim that imagination is informative only when it is constrained to be maximally realistic. However, using a case study from space science, we show that scientists use imagination intentionally to break reality-oriented constraints. To do this well, they first target low-confidence constraints, and then higher-confidence constraints, until a plausible solution is found. This paper exemplifies a new approach to epistemology of imagination that focuses on sets of imaginings (rather than individual imaginings), and responsible (rather than reliable) imaginings

Information retrieval for systematic reviews in food and feed topics: a narrative review

Introduction Systematic review methods are now being used for reviews of food production, food safety and security, plant health, and animal health and welfare. Information retrieval methods in this context have been informed by human healthcare approaches and ideally should be based on relevant research and experience. Objective This narrative review seeks to identify and summarise current research-based evidence and experience on information retrieval for systematic reviews in food and feed topics. Methods MEDLINE (Ovid), Science Citation Index (Web of Science) and ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/) were searched in 2012 and 2016. We also contacted topic experts and undertook citation searches. We selected and summarised studies reporting research on information retrieval, as well as published guidance and experience. Results There is little published evidence on the most efficient way to conduct searches for food and feed topics. There are few available study design search filters, and their use may be problematic given poor or inconsistent reporting of study methods. Food and feed research makes use of a wide range of study designs so it might be best to focus strategy development on capturing study populations, although this also has challenges. There is limited guidance on which resources should be searched and whether publication bias in disciplines relevant to food and feed necessitates extensive searching of the grey literature. Conclusions There is some limited evidence on information retrieval approaches, but more research is required to inform effective and efficient approaches to searching to populate food and feed reviews

Mass Spectrometers for In-Situ Resource Utilisation

The Open University has a heritage in developing small mass spectrometers for planetary lander payloads. The first was a 6 cm radius magnetic sector instrument for light element isotopic analysis (H, C, N, and O), part of the Gas Analysis Package (GAP) on the Beagle 2 Mars lander. The second was the Ptolemy ion trap mass spectrometer (ITMS) on the Philae lander which successfully operated and returned results during the comet landing in November 2014. The Ptolemy ion trap unit fits within a 10 x 10 x 10 cm cube, including RF, detector and ion source electronics and is capable of a mass range from 10 to 150 amu at unit resolution. Development is continuing for purposes ranging from lander instruments (ProSPA and LUVMI), to rugged deployable probes (penetrators) and for process monitoring within ISRU plant. Many of the planned developments are aimed at the various stages of lunar ISRU, from resource prospecting to demonstration and optimisation of extraction processes