February 2024 workshop: Breakout Session, Technology and Infrastructure¶
Document: 06-2024-architecture-workshop-breakout-session-technology-and-infrastructure.pdf, 9 slides,
1,645,220 bytes, from https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/, fetched 2026-10-01T18:28:03Z
(sources/manifest.csv). Title slide: "Breakout Session: Technology and Infrastructure" (slide 1). No presenter;
slides 5 and 6 carry the date "23 February 2024" in the text layer only (not visible on the images) and an APL logo.
Footer: "2024 Moon to Mars Architecture Workshops" (not on the images of slides 5 and 6). Listed on the
Architecture Workshops page under "February 2024". Text:
sources/text/docs/2024-02-06-2024-architecture-workshop-breakout-session-technology-and-infrastructure.txt;
images in sources/raw/slides/2024-02-06-2024-architecture-workshop-breakout-session-technology-and-infrastructure/.
Rank and method. A breakout briefing by STMD, not the architecture of record (SCHEMA, "Workshop slides"), older than Rev B and Rev C. It briefs no white paper. All 9 slides were read in the text layer; the images of all but the title card were viewed (the text-poor slides 3, 7 and 8, and 2, 4, 5, 6 and 9). The text has no "Moon Base", "CUI" or "Pre-Decisional" (searched).
Summary. STMD's part of the Mission Directorate Panel, repeated, with five slides added. Slides 2, 3 and 9 are the panel deck's slides 11, 12 and 13 (the images of 3 and 12 compared: the same chart of LI-1 to LI-9 with LI-1 to LI-8 checked as "Current STMD Investment Areas"); their content is on the panel's page. What this deck adds: the LIFT-1 request for information on oxygen extraction (79 submissions), the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium's old and new structure, STMD's lunar surface power investments tied to LI-1 and MI-1, and nuclear propulsion partners.
Slides¶
| Slide | Title (as printed) | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Breakout Session: Technology and Infrastructure" | Title card |
| 2 | "STMD's Investments Support Later Segments" | The panel deck's slide 11 |
| 3 | "Lunar Infrastructure Technology Investments" | The panel deck's slide 12 (image compared) |
| 4 | "Lunar Infrastructure Foundational Technologies (LIFT-1) RFI Status" | LIFT-1 (image) |
| 5 | "Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC)" | LSIC (image) |
| 6 | "New LSIC Structure" | LSIC (image) |
| 7 | "Lunar Surface Power Investments" | Power (image) |
| 8 | "Nuclear Propulsion" | Nuclear propulsion (image) |
| 9 | "STMD 2024 Role in Architecture Development" | The panel deck's slide 13 (image checked) |
LIFT-1 (slide 4)¶
Read from the image. "Demonstration of ISRU technologies to extract oxygen from lunar soil, to inform eventual production, capture, and storage." "79 Submissions from 73 Unique Organizations representing 21 US States and 8 Foreign Countries". "RFI Released 6 Nov 2023"; "RFI Responses Received 18 Dec 2023". A diagram puts "ISRU" at the centre, fed by "Power", "Excavation", "Dust Mitigation", "Autonomy & Robotics" and "Construction (Option)". A pie chart, "Organization Type": Industry 81%, Individual 7%, NASA Center 6%, Academia 4%, FFRDC 1%, OGA 1%.
Oxygen extraction from regolith is Rev C's #0601 (about 250 kg of oxygen a year; #0601; the pairing is the wiki's). No other source the wiki holds names LIFT-1 (searched).
LSIC (slides 5–6)¶
Read from the images, under the consortium's logo and an APL logo.
- "Current LSIC Organization" (slide 5): "6 Focus Areas + 2 Working Groups + 32 Subgroups". Eight boxes in a ring: "Excavation & Construction", "In-Situ Resource Utilization", "Surface Power", "Dust Mitigation", "Extreme Access", "Extreme Environments", and, bracketed "Working Groups", "Lunar Simulants" and "Interoperability".
- "New LSIC Structure" (slide 6): "3 Focus Areas, Crosscutting Capability Area": "Excavation & Construction", "In-Situ Resource Utilization", "Surface Power", and "Crosscutting Capabilities". "2024 Spring LSIC meeting, 23-25 April 2024, Laurel, MD & Hybrid".
The slides don't say what LSIC is, or where dust, extreme access and extreme environments went. ADD Rev C does: "NASA established the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium to foster communication and potential collaborations among industry, academia, government, and international partners on technologies to enable sustained human and robotic presence on the lunar surface" (ADD Rev C, p. 86); it also names LSIC among the forums on interoperability (p. 99; RT-7). NASA's Lunar Surface Technology page links it.
Power and nuclear propulsion (slides 7–8)¶
Slide 7, "Lunar Surface Power Investments", read from the image: "EXPLORATION POWER: Advancing power generation, distribution, and storage technologies to enable long-term exploration" over a picture of vertical solar arrays and cables, listing "Fission Surface Power", "Regenerative Fuel Cells", "Power Management and Distribution", "Vertical Solar Arrays", "Inductive Charging". Beside it: "Related to:" the hexagon "Mars Surface Power Generation Tech"; "Advanced Power Capability Review completed Aug 2023 (internal)"; "Investments to enable LI-1, MI-1".
The hexagon is the Mars priority decision that became MD-07, decided at the 2024 review (Key definition tasks). The five technologies are subjects of Rev C's power gaps #0901 and #0903 (Power Systems; the pairing is the wiki's). The "Advanced Power Capability Review" is in no other source text (searched).
Slide 8, "Nuclear Propulsion", read from the image: "Provides a robust and reliable energy to human and scientific exploration missions"; "Offers energy-dense systems with high ratios of power to mass and volume"; "Shares a strong interest from industry and other government organizations for space transportation". "Propulsion: Speed, Maneuverability, Resiliency": "High-thrust gravity maneuvers", "Rapid cis-lunar transit", "Robust transportation for Mars human exploration", "Higher value deep-space science missions". "Interagency Commonality": logos and pictures labeled "DoD-SCO", "AFRL", "DARPA" and an Energy Department picture. "Industry Engagements": Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, USNC and BWXT logos.
Mars transportation propulsion, nuclear options among them, is Rev C's #1104 (#1104; the pairing is the wiki's).
What changed by Rev C¶
These comparisons are the wiki's.
- The Mars power decision that slide 7 relates to was made at the 2024 review: fission as the primary Mars surface power technology (2024 paper).
- Fission on the Moon became an element, the Lunar Nuclear Fission System, in Rev C (element page).
- "Technology on-ramp strategies" (slide 9), which STMD said it was leading, appear in no later source the wiki holds under that name (searched for "on-ramp").
Oddities¶
As printed, images checked:
- "Industy" beside "Industry" in slide 4's text layer; the image shows "Industry".
- The date "23 February 2024" and the footer sit in the text layer of slides 5 and 6 but not on the images.
Related pages¶
Mission Directorate Panel, February 2024 · Power Systems · ISRU Systems · Lunar objectives · FE breakout, February 2024