Space Resources Research at ESRIC: At the intersection of Planetary Science, Engineering and Business Development.
Based in Luxembourg, the European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC) is the world’s first innovation centre entirely dedicated to in-situ space resources utilisation (ISRU). Established in 2020, ESRIC is an initiative of the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in strategic partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).
The work at ESRIC focusses at four key areas: ISRU research and research support, start-up incubation and business acceleration, knowledge sharing, and community building. ISRU research at ESRIC centres around laboratory facilities currently being build in partnership with ESA and European industry. This includes laboratory demonstrators for the extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith (simulants) via reduction by hydrogen and molten salt electrolysis.
ESRIC follows an end-to-end strategy in which the whole process chain from resource prospection to the final use of products is to be studied. Circularity and the sustainable utilisation of space resources are key aspects of ESRIC’s research. While current projects mainly focus on enabling a sustained presence of humans on the lunar surface, ISRU on Mars and involving near-Earth asteroids is also being part of ESRIC’s mission.
Image Caption: ESA’s ALCHEMIST technology demonstrator to study extraction of oxygen from lunar ilmenite.
Venue: Sibson Lecture Theatre 3 (siblt3)
Time: 16-17h