From Garson to the Moon

Posted By RON THOMSON, FOR THE SUDBURY STAR

Sudbury is known for its mining industry, but one project may take the local industry out of this world.

Space Resources Canada -- a collection of Canadian companies working together to develop technology for space exploration -- has been doing integration tests with NASA this week at the Ethier gravel pit in Garson. Space Resources Canada includes the Sudbury-based Northern Centre for Advanced Technology Inc. (NORCAT). The Sudbury company has been coordinating the tests.

The objective of the testing was to further develop the range of technologies and capabilities for the recovery and use of resources in space.

Why is this international project with the lofty goal of providing resources for a human outpost on the moon performing these tests in Sudbury?

"Sudbury is the mining capital of the world," said Dale Boucher, NORCAT's director of innovation. "When you're trying to figure out mining, then you got to go where the expertise is. Sudbury, in my mind, is the place to be if you're talking about mining.

"With our activities that we've carried on over the past few years with our partners, we've basically put Sudbury on the map as the place to go for space mining."

Jerry Sanders, In-situ Resource Utilization lead for NASA's lunar surface systems office, said NASA has to use expertise wherever it can find it.

"There is tremendous terrestrial experience in mining that we want to try to utilize," he said. "And NORCAT is a very good conduit between the terrestrial mining industry and the space industry.

"It's easier to teach a miner to develop space hardware than it is to teach an aerospace company to be a miner."

NORCAT has been working on space mining technologies for 10 years, but it recently started looking at the moon.

"About a year-and-half ago, we put together a plan to start to look at what kind of mining activities might take place on the moon," Boucher said.

NORCAT worked with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency with the results culminating to this week's testing in Garson.

"The question is: why would you have to go up and mine on the moon?" Boucher said. "The answer is: because you need to understand how to survive on the moon. The best way to survive on the moon is to use the resources there."

In order to establish an outpost on the moon, which could be used as a launch point for a Mars mission, resources are needed.

The Apollo missions only lasted three days because only a limited amount of supplies could be taken on the missions. For a long-term outpost, robot precursor missions to prepare the moon by starting to produce water, oxygen and propellant from moon rocks, ice-water and solar wind will be required.

The equipment tested in Garson could be an early version of the robot.

NORCAT will provide the mining aspect of the rover -- excavators, drills, the kind of things found at a mining site, Boucher said. NASA will provide oxygen-production plants and solar concentrators.

The Garson site was chosen because it has numerous craters, which could provide communications problems. The craters were used to test if there were communications dead spots when the rover was at the bottom.

Boucher said all the equipment at the site was the real deal.