One small step: We’re designing a competition to help astronauts purify water from the moon

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon in July 1969. But far from heralding a lasting human presence on the lunar surface, his mission was the first of just six to touch down.

And so, in December 1972, Gene Cernan marked a sadder milestone: his are, so far, the last footprints to be left in the moon dust.

Human spaceflight since then has been focused on long-term orbital missions, like the six month stint British European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Tim Peake spent onboard the International Space Station in 2015-16.

But now, in the 2020s, humans are finally going back to the moon.

New lunar missions

The NASA-led Artemis programme will send a crew to orbit the moon late next year – including the first woman (Christina Koch) and the first non-American (Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen) to leave Earth orbit.

A crewed landing on the surface, the first for over 50 years, is currently pencilled in for 2026.

Though the programme has the US in the pilot’s seat, Hansen’s ticket to the moon is just one way in which international partners are taking part. The UK is contributing both through the UK Space Agency and through its membership of the ESA.

(Private companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Japanese firm iSpace are interested too. The private sector will be a big part of delivering Artemis, as well as participating in possible future commercial resource extraction on the lunar surface.)

Plans for a permanent moon base follow the initial landings in the late 2020s, to be located near the moon’s south pole.

There, large amounts of water ice – essential for maintaining life in the base, and a possible source of hydrogen and oxygen to fuel rocket launches – is thought to lurk beneath the lunar dust.

And that’s where Challenge Works comes in.

A challenge prize for lunar water

Over the next few months, thanks to seed funding from the UK Space Agency (UKSA), and working closely with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and our longstanding collaborators at Impact Canada, we will be exploring whether a challenge prize could be used to create the tech to purify that lunar water.

If we confirm the opportunity, and final go-ahead is approved by CSA and UKSA in the autumn, we hope to launch a challenge prize before the end of 2023.

Challenge prizes have a long track record in driving innovation in space.

The Ansari X Prize led to the first ever private crewed space launch in 2004. NASA’s Centennial Challenges programme has led to innovations including new designs for astronauts’ gloves. Our partners in the Canadian Space Agency and Impact Canada have run two challenge prizes – on deep space food and healthcare.

And although this will be the first space prize that Challenge Works has delivered, we contributed to the €10m EIC Horizon Prize for Low-Cost Space Launch as research consultants.

For us, aside from being an exciting project, it’s part of bigger plans to complement our portfolio of climate, health and social innovation prizes with a greater focus on frontier technology innovation.

Help shape our prize

Over the coming months, we will be engaging with experts and industry stakeholders in the UK space sector, as well as engineering teams with relevant expertise from other sectors, to test our emerging thinking on this possible future prize: not just how the objectives and criteria are framed, but what sort of support teams might need to compete.

If you’re interested, are happy to share your perspectives, and are interested in shaping our lunar water challenge prize:

Get in touch