Beetle™ Lunar Rover

With Radiant Gas Dynamic Mining

Trans Astra's Beetle™ is a long duration, electric powered rover that uses a fundamentally new non-contact method of volatile resource collection called Radiant Gas Dynamic (RGD) mining. Our patent-pending RGD process achieves economical and reliable prospecting and extracting of large quantities (thousands of tons per year) of volatile materials from lunar regolith using landed packages of just a few tons each. RGD obviates the problems of mechanical digging and excavation (massive regolith-moving equipment and high-maintenance excavation tools), by using a combination of radio frequency, microwave, and infrared radiation to heat permafrost and other types of ice deposits with a depth-controlled heating profile. This sublimates the ice and encourages a significant fraction of the volatiles to migrate upward out of the regolith into cryotraps where it can be stored in liquid form.

Beetles stop at mining locations and lower their collection domes to gather available water and other volatiles from an area before moving on or returning to base to empty its stores before going back into the field. Beetles are water fuel cell powered and part of a complete water electrolysis energy and propellant economy on the Moon.