Off-earth mining may once have been purely the stuff of science fiction, but now it's potentially a US$1 trillion industry that is likely to be vital if humans are serious about colonizing Mars or the moon.

Sustaining life on other planetary bodies will almost certainly require the use of in-situ resources which currently remain untapped.

UNSW experts—Professor Andrew Dempster and Professor Serkan Saydam, the director and deputy director of the Australian Center for Space Engineering Research (ACSER)—say the challenges posed by mining such materials in space are enormous.

Robotics may be the answer, but even terrestrial mining systems are not yet fully autonomous, so new technologies will need to be developed.

Sandia National Laboratories is well-known for designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services. Now, Sandia researchers are working with NASA to design one for the moon.

This is not the first time Sandia has partnered with NASA to power equipment on the moon. In fact, Sandia provided the technical direction for the radioisotope thermoelectric generators that powered the lunar experiments placed by many of the Apollo missions.

NASA's plan for its concept Artemis lunar base is that it will serve as a technology proving ground for the eventual human exploration of Mars, said Jack Flicker, a Sandia electrical engineer.