NASA-funded "Slingshot" concept aims to map minerals on the Moon and beyond

NASA has recently funded an early-stage spacecraft concept informally called "Slingshot" and officially named Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys. This project aims to scan the Moon, asteroids, and other bodies for valuable minerals. With this, the spacecraft will fly from one world to another to read the mineral makeup from orbit. This will be done long before astronauts arrive at the planet, so that they can confirm that a site is actually worth the cost and risk of a mission.

This mission will help NASA in its moon base plan, which it aims to achieve in the 2030s. The U.S. is looking to get access to helium-3 and other minerals on the moon ahead of China. If the space agency is able to scout the landing site’s resources well ahead, then it would become a major advantage for its lunar base. 

Commenting on this, Pablo Sobron, the project's principal investigator and a research scientist at the SETI Institute, said, "The thing most likely to stop space mining may be that we cannot afford to prove there is anything worth mining.” He added, "Land in the wrong place and you can lose an entire exploration program or a company, and nobody has enough money to keep sending spacecraft and hoping for the best." Slingshot will work to solve this problem.

How would the technology actually work?

The concept of Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys will rely on a method that has already been used on Mars. Currently, NASA’s Perseverance rover uses Raman spectroscopy. It fires a laser at a rock or surface and then studies the reflected light to figure out what minerals are present. A similar approach will be used by Slingshot but from much farther out (somewhere between 19 and 31 miles). With this, it will study targets like the Moon, a near-Earth asteroid, or Mars's moon Phobos. 

As per SETI, "The main challenge for Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys is the distance involved. Raman scattering is very faint and hard to detect. The project team says that only about one photon in 10 trillion is Raman-scattered”. Earlier long-range tests by Pablo Sobron have reached just 393 feet. With this study, the team is now focused on testing if the technique can work across tens of miles.

What comes next for Slingshot?

Right now, Slingshot is only a Phase 1 study. It has received NASA's funding through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, known as NIAC. If the results hold up, the next step would be applying for a larger, two-year Phase 2 grant. This project includes specialists from SETI Institute, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s Ames Research Center, as well as the company OffWorld. As per SETI, “This study is an early step in solving a problem that could become more important as governments and private companies plan long-term work beyond Earth. It is not just about how to extract resources in space, but also about how to gather enough information to decide where it makes sense to try.”

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