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ISRU Pilot Excavator

A Moon Mining Robot

The ISRU Pilot Excavator digs its way through the regolith bin during testing inside Swamp Works at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Overview

The ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx) is a Space Technology Mission Directorate Game Changing Development project being developed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. IPEx will excavate soil on the surface of the Moon, or regolith, and take the material to a processing plant where usable elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and water can be extracted for life support systems.

What is ISRU?

ISRU stands for “in-situ resource utilization,” a technical way of saying that you’re using things that are already available someplace, rather than something you brought with you. Learn more about ISRU.

Recent Updates

Autonomy Testing

The IPEx team has begun testing various approaches to autonomously drive the excavator on the lunar surface. Read more here.

ISRU Pilot Excavator

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More Information

IPEx FY23 Annual Review Presentation

Oct 20, 2023

VND.OPENXMLFORMATS-OFFICEDOCUMENT.PRESENTATIONML.PRESENTATION (203.09 MB)

IPEx FY22 Annual Review Presentation

Oct 24, 2023

VND.OPENXMLFORMATS-OFFICEDOCUMENT.PRESENTATIONML.PRESENTATION (159.86 MB)

IPEx FY21 Annual Review Presentation

Oct 20, 2023

VND.OPENXMLFORMATS-OFFICEDOCUMENT.PRESENTATIONML.PRESENTATION (201.14 MB)

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A team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tests small- and medium-sized bucket drums July 16, 2021, in the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab’s “big bin” during prototype development for the pilot excavator.
A team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tests small- and medium-sized bucket drums July 16, 2021, in the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab’s “big bin” during prototype development for the pilot excavator, a robotic mission designed for lunar operations. Robotics engineers Jason Schuler and Austin Langton worked inside the bin, teaming up with software engineer Kurt Leucht, who worked just outside of it.
NASA/Kim Shiflett
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