THz Heterodyne Spectrometer for in-situ Resource Utilization (THSiRU)

A successful mission to the Moon is considered a testbed before a human voyage to Mars. One of the critical requirements for the period between Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to sustainable human presence (2024–2028) is locating and identifying the availability of water and critical volatiles in the Moon’s polar and equatorial regions for future in-situ resource use and extraction. Locating these resources supports and sustains robotic operations and long-term astronaut habitability. Thus, we are developing a sub-mm-wave/THz Heterodyne Spectrometer (THSiRU) that will detect lunar water (H216O) and reveal the lunar hydration state, including at the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) by detecting hydroxyl (OH) and heavy water (HDO) simultaneously. The spectrometer has a sensitivity of <0.01 nW/Hz and a high spectral resolution <1×10⁻⁵cm⁻¹, which allows it to detect a smaller amount of water with a column density of 1.1 THSiRU is a state-of-the-art instrument that has a 2U CubeSat volume, low mass (<2 kg), and power (<10W).