Blue Origin, the US space tech company founded by Jeff Bezos, has announced Project Oasis, a multi-phase initiative to identify key lunar resources from orbit, assess them on the ground, and harness them in situ.
Oasis-1, alongside its partners in Luxembourg, is the first mission in the Oasis campaign. It aims to create detailed high-resolution maps of lunar water ice, Helium-3, radionuclides, rare earth elements, precious metals and other materials, Blue Origin said in a media release.
“Once we know what’s really there and how to access it, everything changes,” said Pat Remias, vice president, Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering, Blue Origin. “Project Oasis creates the foundation for a thriving space economy that benefits everyone, including the billions of individuals on Earth who will benefit from space-based resources.”
Project Oasis makes the construction of space infrastructure economically viable and strategically sustainable by integrating low-cost space transportation with in-situ resource utilization. While Oasis-1 will carry out resource prospecting, it will be further enabled through Blue Alchemist, which will process regolith into useful products like oxygen, solar cells, and power cables.
In partnership with Luxembourg and its national space agency, Project Oasis is being developed jointly by Blue Origin’s Space Resources Center of Excellence (SRCE), and the company’s international office in Luxembourg. GOMSpace and ESRIC in Luxembourg are also supporting the project, the media release said.
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