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Breakout sessions at the lunar volatiles prospecting workshop. Our group is assessing Phase B: after orbital remote sensing (Phase A) but before high capability rovers (Phase C) finalize the 1 sq km mine location. #2018SRR 
2/ Our group focused on (first) swarms of small impactors to burrow into each of 3 craters that Phase A had selected as locations of high hydrogen. The impactors will seek to Monte Carlo measure water concentration, chemistry and variability over the crater, plus soil mechanics.
3/ Then (second) we would send a static lander or a hopper with more advanced instruments to the best of these three craters to better constrain the water's variability and its physical form. We are working to define the instruments. But the iverall ideas are still evolving, too.
"Closing the business case for mining propellants on the Moon," by @george_sowers, formerly chief scientist of @ulalaunch now faculty at Colorado School of Mines.
2/ The concept is not to use rovers that dig and haul regolith with ice to a processing plant, but instead to heat the ground with mirrors and capture the sublimed vapors in a tent as it diffuses from the ground.
3/ Julie Brisset & I at @UCF are funded to do physics-based computer simulation of this process in collaboration with them. More work is needed, but so far the results are very promising. There are enough "knobs" to turn in the design that we feel confident we can make it work.
