Space Resources

A Colorado School of Mines graduate student is developing a new lunar payload that could be deployed to otherwise inaccessible areas of the Moon.

Angel Abbud Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at Colorado School of Mines, shares the importance of discovering and utilizing resources in space.

Three new minors will give undergraduate students more ways to tailor their Mines experience to serve their interests and career ambitions. Aerospace engineering, space mining and teaching minors will

Researchers at Mines, Honeybee Robotics, NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Pioneer Astronautics will build and demonstrate hardware to produce oxygen and steel from lunar regolith.

"If we can build this thing, we’ll be able to have unlimited access to the shadowed regions of the Moon," said Ross Centers, a student in Mines' Space Resources Program.

The new programs draw from the core areas of expertise Mines is known for — from civil and environmental engineering to extraction to materials science — to create an interdisciplinary field of study that prepares students for the next step in their careers.

Claire Thomas, one of 40 members of the Brooke Owens Fellowship Class of 2020, will spend 10 weeks working at Made in Space, a company developing manufacturing technology for space, and receive mentorship from aerospace industry veterans.

Team DREAMR – short for Drilling Rig for the Exploration and Acquisition of Martian Resources – is the fourth Mines team in four years to qualify for the one-of-a-kind collegiate aerospace competition.

Mechanical Engineering's Greg Jackson is collaborating with OxEon Energy on a $1.8 million NASA project that could bring interplanetary fuel stations one step closer to reality.