This article investigates the use of a bespoke fund, the Space Resources Fund (SRF), to facilitate monetary benefit sharing from commercial space resource utilisation (SRU) and at the same time provide a source of funding for a developing space resource industry. The study investigates the possible objectives such a fund could have and compares these to range of terrestrial fund types that could have similar objectives. We find that there is no one fund type that could meet the possible objectives for a SRF, however, by combining several fund types, it is possible to construct a dedicated fund that meets the objectives initially developed. The study proposes a fund with the Double Bottom Line of both generating monetary benefits from commercial SRU and providing investment capital to an industry targeting SRU. The study also proposes a possible strategy, structure, funding mechanism and benefit distribution mechanism for the SRF and undertakes high level financial modelling to illustrate the wealth creation potential of such a fund. Further, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the approach proposed in this study compared to the use of a royalty mechanism for monetary benefit sharing, should monetary benefit sharing ultimately be proposed, by the UN Committee On the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) for example. This work builds on previous work that reviews the ongoing debate concerning benefit sharing from commercial SRU and explores the use of royalties for such monetary benefit sharing in the context of commercial lunar ice mining. We conclude that a SRF as proposed here could help resolve the long standing dilemma of how to facilitate monetary benefit sharing from commercial SRU without impacting the development of such an industry.

Despite the increasing number of space launches, growth of the commercial space sector, signing of the Artemis Accords, maturation of space mining technologies, the emergence of a regulatory environment through domestic legislation, and a comprehensive body of international law, an intergovernmental governing authority has yet to be established to manage mining activities on the Moon. We developed a Lunar Mining Code and mapping tool to regulate and manage prospecting and exploration activities for water ice at the Moon's poles. The Lunar Mining Code is composed of a notification system to manage prospecting, a contract system for issuing exploration licenses to allotted areas on the Moon, and best mining practices and principles to promote equal access and safeguard the lunar environment.

This work focuses on thermal water extraction on the lunar surface. We previously developed a three-dimensional finite element model (FEM) implementing heat and gas diffusion in the porous granular medium that is icy lunar regolith. Here, we present an improved version of this work in which we implemented a more realistic regolith model. In particular, we addressed previous model simplifications on regolith emissivity and porosity, water sublimation rate, as well as regolith and water ice thermal conductivity and permeability. Incorporating recent modeling and experimental work from the literature, we investigated the effect of these soil properties on the outcome of our simulations, with a particular interest in the yield of the thermal extraction process. Aiming at understanding what thermal water extraction would produce if heating the lunar surface directly, we also studied the effect of open borders on extraction yields. We find that the crude icy regolith approximation we implemented in Paper I provided a lower estimation of water vapor yields upon heating. Overall and using the same heating methods (surface heating as well as inserted drills), our more accurate regolith model implementation extracted more water from the simulation volume. With this new model, we observed that extraction yields depended mostly on the ice content of the regolith, and to a lesser extent on the heating configuration (number of drills) and power. In two specific configurations, 16 and 25 drills at 104 W in 1%vol icy regolith, heating allowed the extraction of nearby ice, efficiently desiccating the entire simulation volume. Apart from these two cases, the highest extraction yields were obtained for 104 W surface heating of a volume with closed borders with values over 80%. In open border volumes, highest yields were around 70% achieved for the highest number of drills (16 and 25), at the highest power (104 W) in the regolith with the largest icy fraction. Extraction masses started being noticeable around a few minutes, but reaching most of the maximum possible yields took up to several days in some cases. Defining an extraction efficiency by combining the yield and extraction times, we found that the best compromise between hardware complexity, time, and yield would be working in open border environments, using dense drill configurations in ice-rich regolith, and loose drill configurations in ice-poor regolith. In both cases, extraction efficiencies were similar at 102 W and 103 W per drill, indicating that low power solutions would yield similar results than higher power ones. Overall, our results support the viability of thermal water extraction in future ISRU architectures.

Recent discoveries of potential ice particles and ice-cemented regolith on extraterrestrial bodies like the Moon and Mars have opened new opportunities for developing technologies to extract water, facilitating future space missions and activities on these extraterrestrial body surfaces. This study explores the potential for water extraction from regolith through an experiment designed to test water recuperation from regolith simulant under varying gravitational conditions. The resultant water vapor extracted from the regolith is re-condensed on a substrate surface and collected in liquid form. Three types of substrates, hydrophobic, hydrophilic, and grooved, are explored. The system's functionality was assessed during a parabolic flight campaign simulating three distinct gravity levels: microgravity, lunar gravity, and Martian gravity. Our findings reveal that the hydrophobic surface demonstrates the highest efficiency due to drop-wise condensation, and lower gravity levels result in increased water condensation on the substrates. The experiments aimed to understand the performance of specific substrates under lunar, Martian, and microgravity conditions, providing an approach for in-situ water recovery, which is crucial for establishing economically sustainable water supplies for future missions. To enhance clarity and readability, in this paper, H2O will be referred to as water.

This paper explores the impacts of a potential royalty mechanism by considering the effects of different royalty and tax rates on the economics of a hypothetical commercial lunar ice mining project. The study also examines the conceivable benefits that could be generated from a royalty regime from a global perspective and considers the possible impacts of royalties on operational decision making in a com-mercial lunar ice mining context. There has been substantial debate since the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 regarding how to ensure the international community benefits from the commercial exploitation of space resources, should these activities eventuate. This includes the recent initiative by the Legal Subcommittee of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to establish a Working Group to explore potential models for a legal framework to govern space resource activities. No formal proposal to include a royalty mechanism has yet been made; however, it is apparent that part of the mandate of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Legal Subcommittee could be to explore the issue of benefit sharing, and it is possible that a royalty mechanism or something similar could ul-timately be proposed. After considering the impact of royalties on a hypothetical lunar ice mining project, this paper finds that royalties, in particular ad valorem royalties, could have a meaningful impact on the economics and operational parameters of a commercial lunar ice mining project, in turn potentially impacting the ability to raise the funding required to develop such projects. The study also finds that under plausible scenarios, the benefits generated on a per capita basis would be negligible, even assuming significant industry growth rates over 50 years. The study, therefore, concludes that the rationale for imposing a royalty mechanism on space resource activities for the purposes of benefit sharing through direct monetary distribution to recipients would need to be carefully examined should such a royalty mechanism ever be proposed.& COPY; 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Space resources such as minerals or lunar ice deposits are of growing economic and political interest in the context of the emerging space economy and the intensifying geopolitical tensions of a new space race. Scholars and stakeholders increasingly engage with the question of how to regulate the future exploration and exploitation of space resources under international law. A potential option that has drawn broad attention in the debate is a multilateral regime that would regulate space resources as the common heritage of humanity and aim for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits that derive from their exploration and exploitation. Whereas a considerable body of literature addresses the legal and institutional characteristics of such a hypothetical regime, questions of regime formation have so far been neglected. This paper probes the feasibility and the prospects of developing a multilateral and common heritage-centric regime for space resources by a) drawing on theoretical insights from the scholarly debate on the politics of international regime formation and b) extracting insights and lessons from two historical cases of regime formation (under the Antarctic Treaty System and the Law of the Sea Convention) addressing similar challenges of regulating transnational commons in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. The analysis indicates extraordinarily adverse background conditions that make the successful formation of a multilateral and common heritage centric regime for space resources highly implausible despite its prima facie normative appeal. The political prospects for devising fair, equitable and effective solutions to the problem of space resources are accordingly limited and likely to remain so.

Commercial lunar resource extraction activities could become a reality in the mid to long term. Under the existing Outer Space Treaty, there is ambiguity regarding the legal context within which such activities could occur. The Artemis Accords, signed in 2020, are proposed as a mechanism by which space resource extraction activities could take place, with a key proposal of the Accords being the use of Safety Zones to facilitate lunar resource extraction. Whilst the use of Safety Zones is ostensibly proposed for small scale In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) activities focussed on lunar water production, messaging around the Artemis Accords has indicated that there may be an intent to use them to set precedent for longer term, larger scale commercial resource activity. This article explores the practicability of using Safety Zones for large scale commercial lunar resource extraction from the perspective of the commercial entities that could undertake such activities. Conceptual long term demand for water sourced from ice contained in the lunar Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) is derived, and the surface area required to produce sufficient water to meet this market demand determined. Due to the potential characteristics of water ice occurrence in the lunar PSRs, the footprint of operations could be substantial, and virtually without precedent in the terrestrial extractive resource industries. The article concludes that the use of the Safety Zones proposed in the Artemis Accords could be impractical for the governance of large scale commercial lunar resource production. It is suggested that whilst small scale ISRU activities take place under the auspices of the Artemis Accords, efforts are continued to develop a multilateral governance framework acceptable to both the international community and to the commercial sector for the potential large scale development of lunar resources.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Heat and mass transfers occurring on surface and within subsurface of extraterrestrial bodies during natural and future industrial heating processes require knowledge of thermal properties of porous dry and icy materials. This paper investigates thermal properties of icy lunar regolith with various water ice contents and their influence on phase change interface movement. A series of experiments has been employed to simulate borehole heating of icy regolith samples under low vacuum (0.1-1.5 Torr) and very low temperatures (>93 K) using JSC-1A regolith analogs prepared as mud-pies with water contents from 0 to 15 wt%. Cylindrical samples were heated via cartridge heater located in the center of the samples. Real-time measurements of temperatures in an array of points and vacuum chamber pressures were recorded. To decipher thermal properties data in this inverse heat equation problem, a 3D finite element method modelling has been used to simulate the behaviour of both the samples and the vacuum chamber. The results provided rough matches with expected thermal properties and the model was used in determination of phase change interface movement in the samples. These results could be applicable to research on properties and composition of other rocky and icy extraterrestrial objects or design of water ice prospecting instruments. Most importantly they should improve our understanding of processes applied in extraterrestrial water mining and visualize engineering challenges of these processes.

Thermal mining is a promising architecture, which may provide reliable and 'dirt-simple' means of production of space-sourced water, oxygen and rocket propellant in the future. It is especially tailored to water ice deposits that exist within lunar Permanently Shadowed Regions, where our quest for riches of the Outer Space might begin. Here, the thermal mining extraction system is simulated and analysed with combined heat and mass transfer FEM modelling. The results exhibited that water extraction on the Moon might follow specific production phases, which closely relate to changes in the sublimation interface movement over large timeframes. The production behaviour on the Moon might have many characteristics of relevant production systems on Earth. This may open door for many well-established terrestrial models and production projections to be refitted to extraterrestrial case. It was found that the required water yields of the thermal mining architecture, which make its case economically and commercially viable, are hard to reach without production optimization and new systems development. The production is projected to be significantly hindered by sublimation lag build-up, which would create thermal insulation for the icy deposits. Sublimation lag removal and other strategies might be the answer to that problem.

We have used a three-dimensional thermal and gas diffusion model to study the heated extraction of water ice from lunar regolith. Both surface heating and the insertion of heated drills were investigated for various heating power levels and expected soil ice fractions. Our calculations rely on the use of the Crank-Nicolson finite difference method for the diffusion equations. We find that the extraction of water vapor from lunar regolith requires high levels of heating power in the investigated configurations. Any heating below about 1000 W per m 2 or per heated drill produces negligible amounts of vapor. We also find that extraction efficiencies are highly dependent on the heating configuration, as well as the initial ice fraction present in the regolith. In addition, we find that, depending on the heating configuration, significant amounts of water escape the heated volume and are lost through refreeze in colder regions. We conclude that water extraction through heating will be a power-hungry process if not optimized through additional controls (e.g. volume confinement by heated walls). In addition, the choice of a heating configuration for optimal extraction efficiency depends on the ice content of the soil. Therefore, detailed prospecting will be essential to the design of future ISRU activities on the Moon.