Lunar mining rover
A four-wheeled robot that digs icy lunar soil and hauls it to a processing plant. It is the workhorse of Starpath's plan to make rocket fuel on the Moon.
Why it matters
Water ice at the lunar south pole could become oxygen and hydrogen for rockets, which would make trips beyond the Moon cheaper than hauling all fuel up from Earth. Someone first has to dig and move a lot of frozen dirt, cheaply and without humans.
How the technology works
The rover uses a pair of rotating drums that swing out from its body and scrape into hard regolith, collecting it without draining the battery quickly. A fleet would gather soil within roughly 20 km of a central plant.
NASA tested an upgraded version for about three days in a thermal vacuum chamber at Marshall Space Flight Center in August 2025.
Sources
Updated Oct 21, 2026 · How we source facts · Suggest a correction