Facilities

The Center for Space Resources has experimental and computing laboratories located in several departments in the Colorado School of Mines campus (Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Chemical, Petroleum, and Mining Engineering, Materials and Metallurgy, Geophysics, Geology, Computer Science, and Physics), as well as its own dedicated Space Resources Laboratory. Among these facilities are the following:

Space Resources Laboratory (SRL)

Facility with several “dirty” vacuum chambers (Apollo, Mercury, Viking) capable of reproducing pressure and temperature conditions of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids for studies of regolith geotechnical properties, volatile extraction and collection, material processing, advanced manufacturing, and testing of spaceflight hardware.

Planetary Robotics Laboratory (PRL)

Development of robotic prototypes for excavation, drilling, scraping, paving, soil removal, construction, and material transport on lunar and planetary surfaces. The laboratory includes an adjustable-size testbed and a large 3D ICON printer for true-scale habitat construction.

Planetary Material Characterization Laboratory

Facility for analysis and characterization of rocks, minerals, and lunar and planetary simulants. The laboratory is equipped with a TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), an Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) unit, and a particle size & shape analyzer to perform rapid and accurate analysis of mineral and elemental composition, as well as size and shape characterization.

Planetary Cartography Laboratory

Facility part of the Cannon Group with high performance computer workstations, virtual and augmented reality, large-format printers and 3D printers, interactive displays, and software tools for mapping, GIS, remote sensing, and lunar and planetary landing site analysis

Fuel Cell Technology Laboratory

The Colorado Fuel Cell Center provides a facility to develop and test solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and polymer-electrolyte membrane (PEM) cells for spacecraft, power generation, and electrolytic separation

Water Filtration and Processing Laboratory

The Advanced Water Technology Center (AQWATEC) develops water recovery equipment based on reverse osmosis and distillation for advanced life support systems on long-duration space missions and planetary outposts

Human-Centered Robotics Laboratory

Research in multisensory robot perception, learning and adaptation, and decision making for natural collaborative human-robot teaming applications

Instruments and Sensors Laboratory

Development of remote sensing and surface instruments for detection of trace species on lunar and planetary regolith and rocks