NASA Plans and Priorities for ISRU on the Moon, Mars and Beyond

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is developing the next set of innovative technologies to enable human and robotic space missions. The NASA Strategic Technology Framework guides how STMD makes investments categorized into four themes: Go, Land, Live and Explore. Each includes specific strategic outcomes that span 18 technology capability areas.

Dr. Julie Kleinhenz, NASA’s In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) System Capability Team Deputy, provides an overview of the ISRU Envisioned Future Priorities on the lunar surface and beyond to Mars.

The NASA timeslines and projects being developed are proving the ISRU concepts in the lab and with some demonstration missions.

There is list of technological readiness scores as of 2022.

The work is progressing and is feasible. The publicly available ISRU technology has to be massively scaled for any useful nearterm unmanned mission for Mars. There is no Starship launch capability yet. This is the priority for SpaceX, after that is proven a two year or four year push can be made for scaling systems and payloads for the actual first unmanned Mars missions.

1 thought on “NASA Plans and Priorities for ISRU on the Moon, Mars and Beyond”

  1. I would guess that asteroids and other non-lunar NEOs are a better source of vital raw elements to the cis-lunar industrial and manufacturing system. The Moon would be real estate and research.

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