From Missouri to the Moon: Student’s NASA Award Fuels Big Idea

Big thoughts and ideas can turn into big plans if you are smart enough and bold enough to see things through. A Missouri S&T student has nabbed a NASA award to go after the moon. Seriously.

An S&T Miner wants to mine the moon

The engineers studying in Rolla, Mo. at Missouri S&T are called the “Miners” and Jacob Ortega, a Ph.D. student in the aerospace engineering department is unironically wanting to mine the moon. Kind of.

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NASA’s Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity Award has been won by Ortega, so NASA will provide support for his research to turn lunar surface materials into aluminum to be used for construction on the moon itself. Ortega’s plan utilizes electricity and molten salt to extract aluminum oxide from the anorthite sitting on the moon's surface. This would allow for materials already on site to be used instead of having to transport all of them from Earth.

The Bigger Vision for Lunar Construction

NASA and Ortega are very well acquainted as they have already been onboard with his work on the lunar mining idea. He won their BIG Idea challenge – Lunar Forge, a few years ago. This NASA award can be used for tuition, expenses for research or a summer as a visiting technologist in Huntsville, Alabama at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Ortega is helping science fiction become science fact.