What Does the UK In-Situ Resource Utilization Review Reveal About Using Resources on the Moon and Mars?

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Key Takeaways

• UK strengths include resource prospecting, material handling, and oxygen extraction technologies.
• Most surveyed technologies need further development, testing, and clearer funding pathways.
• Commercial prospects depend on reliable production systems, mission demand, and paying customers.

What the UK Technology Review Establishes

On October 6, 2026, the UK Space Agency published an independent assessment of British capabilities in in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), the production of useful supplies from materials found at a space mission’s destination. Commissioned in 2025 and led by Frazer-Nash Consultancy, the UK technology review examines how British organizations could contribute to resource prospecting, excavation, processing, and manufacturing on the Moon and Mars.

The report identifies capabilities that could support international exploration without requiring the United Kingdom to develop every component of a resource production system. Its main opportunities include scientific instruments, regolith handling, oxygen extraction, materials processing, and testing services. Regolith is the loose layer of dust, broken rock, and other material covering the surfaces of the Moon and many other planetary bodies.

The review is an assessment rather than an adopted national strategy. Its introductory statement explicitly distinguishes the judgments of Frazer-Nash and consulted organizations from government policy. Recommendations for longer funding commitments, flight demonstrations, and a coordinated British approach should not be interpreted as approved programs or financial commitments.

Its evidence includes an industry and academic survey, a subsequent workshop, published research, technology descriptions, and a mapping of facilities. The survey received 29 responses, with two excluded because they came from international organizations. Among the remaining 27 responses, 18 represented industry, eight represented academia, and one represented a public body. Fourteen of the industrial respondents were small or medium-sized organizations.

Those figures describe the participating sample. They do not establish the size of the entire British ISRU sector or provide a representative national census. Participation was voluntary, and the report acknowledges self-selection, self-reporting, and the limitations of a survey conducted at one point in time.

The resulting assessment provides a useful account of where participating organizations see technical potential and practical obstacles. Its strongest finding is that Britain has relevant expertise across several production stages, but comparatively few technologies have progressed toward mature space operations. The distinction between possessing a promising component and delivering a dependable resource service runs throughout the report.

Why In-Situ Resource Utilization Depends on Location and Use

ISRU seeks to reduce the supplies that missions must transport from Earth. Water could support crew needs and industrial processes. Oxygen could serve life-support equipment or act as the oxidizer in chemical rocket propulsion. Regolith could provide shielding, construction feedstock, or material from which metals and silicon are extracted.

The economic value of these products depends heavily on where they are produced and consumed. A supply of oxygen beside a lunar habitat has a different value from oxygen at a distant site without transportation infrastructure. Material that replaces a costly Earth delivery may have operational value even when the equivalent commodity is inexpensive on Earth.

This relationship explains the emphasis on using local space resources. The potential benefit comes from avoiding part of the transportation burden, extending operations, or supporting activities that would otherwise require additional launches. That benefit must exceed the cost of delivering, operating, maintaining, and eventually replacing the production equipment.

The Moon presents two major resource pathways. One involves water and other volatile substances, particularly in cold polar environments. The other involves minerals throughout the regolith. Lunar material contains substantial oxygen, but that oxygen is chemically bound within minerals. Extracting it requires a process that breaks chemical bonds rather than simply collecting breathable gas.

Water extraction introduces a different set of constraints. Permanently shadowed regions can preserve ice because they receive no direct sunlight, but that same condition complicates power supply, temperature control, mobility, and communications. Detecting water does not establish how much can be recovered, how consistently it occurs, or whether the surrounding material can be excavated efficiently.

Mars offers another resource environment because its atmosphere contains abundant carbon dioxide. NASA’s MOXIE experiment produced oxygen from that atmosphere aboard the Perseverance rover. Between its arrival in 2021 and the completion of operations in 2023, the experiment generated 122 grams of oxygen and achieved production of 12 grams per hour at its best performance.

MOXIE demonstrated an important conversion process under Martian conditions. It did not demonstrate a complete propellant factory, continuous industrial production, or the storage and transfer systems required by a crewed mission. Its achievement supports further development, with a substantial difference remaining between an experimental instrument and infrastructure on which astronauts could depend.

Why Prospecting Is a Strong British Contribution

The review identifies prospecting as a comparatively strong British capability. Prospecting determines which resources are present, their concentration, their physical and chemical form, and the conditions under which they could be recovered. These measurements inform both scientific investigation and the design of future production systems.

Orbital instruments can identify promising regions and characterize broad surface properties. Surface instruments and drills can then test local conditions. The two approaches complement each other because an orbital indication of hydrogen or a favorable temperature does not resolve the detailed composition, depth, or accessibility of a particular deposit.

That distinction connects the British review to the international ISRU gap assessment. Resource knowledge remains a development requirement in its own right. Processing equipment cannot be designed confidently without knowing the properties and variability of the material it will receive.

A prominent British contribution is ProSPA, the analytical instrument suite within the European Space Agency’s PROSPECT payload. The PROSPECT mission page lists a planned 2027 flight aboard an Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander. Leonardo in Italy leads the payload and its ProSEED drilling system, and the Open University leads ProSPA.

PROSPECT is designed to collect samples from beneath the lunar surface, heat them in sealed ovens, and analyze the gases released. Its planned drilling depth extends to 1 meter. The measurements are intended to improve understanding of lunar volatiles and investigate resource extraction processes, including oxygen extraction.

These are planned mission capabilities rather than completed lunar results. The payload’s scientific purpose also differs from producing a sustained commercial supply. A limited number of samples can improve geological understanding and test extraction methods without establishing the performance of a mine across a much larger operating area.

The report also catalogs British mass spectrometry and remote-sensing expertise. A mass spectrometer identifies substances by measuring charged particles according to their mass-related behavior. Such instruments can characterize gases released from samples and help distinguish water, other volatiles, and contaminants.

Prospecting offers Britain a contribution that can precede large production plants. It can supply information needed by international partners, reduce uncertainty in equipment design, and support landing-site selection. The commercial significance of that contribution depends on the quality and relevance of the measurements, rather than an assumption that any detected material is already an economically recoverable reserve.

Excavation and Material Handling Require Their Own Development

The review treats excavation, transfer, and handling as important capabilities between resource identification and processing. A reactor cannot produce useful material unless another system delivers suitable feedstock at the required rate. Drilling into a deposit, collecting samples, and supplying an industrial plant involve related mechanisms but different operating demands.

Lunar excavation must account for abrasive dust, vacuum, reduced gravity, and uncertain subsurface conditions. Equipment must resist wear, protect joints and seals, and maintain traction or stability as it applies force. Ice-bearing material adds further complications because excavation can release volatiles or expose them to conditions that cause losses.

The University of Glasgow’s Pulse Elevator illustrates a British approach to material transport. The review describes a mechanism that uses vertical oscillation and internal geometry to move granular material upward. It offers an alternative to conventional rotating augers and could reduce some mechanical complexity associated with drilling and conveying material.

The report assigns that technology a readiness level of four at the time of its assessment. Its reported demonstrations support continued development, but they do not establish dependable operation in a lunar production campaign. Performance would need to be examined with relevant feedstock, environmental conditions, operating duration, and integration requirements.

Other listed capabilities include directed-energy drilling at RAL Space and the Mobile Lunar Excavation and Size Separation System developed by the University of Manchester and Amentum. Their inclusion demonstrates the breadth of approaches considered in the review. It does not imply that these technologies have been combined into one qualified production system.

After excavation, beneficiation prepares material for processing by separating useful fractions from less useful ones. Sorting particles by size can improve feeding consistency. Separating minerals according to electrical or magnetic properties can increase the concentration of a desired constituent and reduce the material that must pass through an energy-intensive reactor.

Imperial College London’s listed work includes electrostatic mineral enrichment and electrostatic traveling-wave size classification. These approaches apply electrical effects to material separation. Their usefulness depends on the properties of the particles, the processing objective, and whether the separation gains justify the equipment and energy they require.

Handling capabilities also have applications beyond resource extraction. Surface construction, landing-site preparation, scientific sampling, and dust management all involve interacting with regolith. The review identifies a plausible reason to investigate these technologies further even before sustained demand for lunar oxygen or water develops.

Oxygen and Metal Extraction Offer Connected Products

Oxygen extraction receives particular attention because oxygen supports both life support and propulsion. The oxygen content of lunar material is substantial, but recoverable yield depends on mineral composition and the chosen process. A high oxygen content alone does not establish low production cost or reliable output.

The report describes several extraction approaches, including molten-salt electrolysis, molten-regolith electrolysis, hydrogen reduction, plasma processes, and carbothermal reduction. These methods use different combinations of heat, electricity, and chemical reactions to separate oxygen from minerals. Their operating requirements determine the power systems, reactors, consumables, and maintenance arrangements that must accompany them.

Molten-salt electrolysis can produce oxygen alongside metallic material. This creates a potential relationship between consumables production and manufacturing. However, the resulting metal mixture is not automatically suitable for a structural component, electrical conductor, or other finished product. Further separation, refining, forming, and quality control may be required.

The review lists Metalysis, the University of Glasgow, the Open University, and OHB Space UK among contributors associated with the ISRU Demonstration Mission’s molten-salt approach. Its mission annex describes the demonstration as proposed, with a launch date to be confirmed. Participation in development should be distinguished from an operating lunar facility.

The report also describes Frazer-Nash’s Hydrogen Plasma Extraction from Regolith concept, known as HyPER. It proposes using reactive hydrogen plasma to release oxygen from minerals in the form of water vapor. The water would then be collected and split to recover oxygen, with hydrogen potentially recycled through the process.

HyPER is assigned a readiness level of two in the report. Regolithix’s Regolith Ice Plasma Purifier for Lunar Exploration, or RIPPLE, is assigned level four. RIPPLE targets contaminated lunar ice and combines vaporization, particle separation, plasma processing, and gas capture. These ratings place both within development, with different amounts of validation still required.

The intended customer also affects the preferred extraction pathway. Producing oxygen from regolith could reduce Earth deliveries even if another propellant component continued to arrive from Earth. Producing both hydrogen and oxygen from water requires sufficient recoverable water and additional systems to separate, liquefy, store, and transfer the gases.

The requirements for refueling a lunar lander illustrate why reactor output is only one part of the problem. Product purity, storage losses, delivery location, and the receiving vehicle’s requirements all affect whether locally produced material becomes a usable operational supply.

Funding Gaps Affect More Than Individual Prototypes

Most technologies described by survey respondents were at technology readiness level five or below. Technology readiness levels provide a structured description of development maturity, progressing from basic principles toward demonstrated operation. The review uses the European Space Agency’s scale and identifies a decline in the number of technologies represented at higher levels.

That pattern is often described as a development funding gap. A concept may obtain support for laboratory work but struggle to secure the resources needed for environmental testing, integration, qualification, and flight. The later stages can require larger commitments before commercial revenue becomes plausible.

Survey participants identified funding as a frequent obstacle. Their concerns included oversubscribed calls, funding sources with different objectives, unclear progression between programs, and short funding periods. Participants also reported difficulty presenting an investment case when future mission activity and potential customers remained uncertain.

Industrial respondents associated unstable funding with an emphasis on individual demonstration prototypes rather than repeatable, scalable systems. Academic respondents identified a related workforce problem: short research contracts could end before the technology reached its next development stage. The loss of experienced staff could interrupt work even when the underlying research remained promising.

These findings explain why a sequence of grants does not necessarily produce an operational capability. Successful development requires continuity across technical stages, access to suitable facilities, and opportunities to demonstrate equipment in relevant environments. Funding arrangements that support those connections may matter as much as the amount awarded to one project.

The report’s recommendations include clearer national priorities, a visible pipeline of demonstrations, and better coordination between academic research support and higher-readiness space development mechanisms. These are recommendations from the consultation. They should not be read as evidence that the government has already established such a pipeline.

A further qualification concerns scale. The review explicitly states that scale was not incorporated into its readiness definitions. Hardware demonstrated successfully at a small scale may receive a high rating without being ready to produce the quantities required by a sustained exploration program.

Assessment needs several measures alongside readiness: output rate, operating duration, energy consumption, maintenance frequency, product quality, and performance under representative conditions. A technology can be mature for one instrument or experiment and still require substantial development for an industrial service.

Shared Facilities and Roadmaps Could Improve Integration

The report identifies 21 UK facility owners with capabilities relevant to ISRU development. These owners include universities, public research organizations, and industrial companies. The count refers to owners identified through the review, rather than 21 standardized facilities offering equivalent lunar testing services.

Their capabilities include vacuum chambers, regolith testbeds, analytical laboratories, electrolysis equipment, ceramics processing, irradiation, and spacecraft testing. The University of Glasgow’s plume-regolith facility, the Open University’s extraction and analytical facilities, and Metalysis’s processing equipment illustrate different parts of that infrastructure.

Workshop participants argued that existing facilities could be used more effectively through improved awareness and collaboration. This offers a practical development option because some useful infrastructure already exists. It does not remove the need to establish access arrangements, test suitability, scheduling, costs, and consistent methods.

Regolith simulants are particularly important in this work. They reproduce selected properties of lunar material for terrestrial testing, but no single simulant necessarily represents every mineralogical, mechanical, thermal, and chemical condition. A test suitable for checking particle handling may be insufficient for evaluating oxygen yield or ice recovery.

Environmental testing presents similar limits. A vacuum chamber can reproduce low pressure, but gravity remains terrestrial unless a separate method addresses it. Equipment may need several complementary tests to establish how it handles particles, rejects heat, tolerates dust, and operates over an extended period.

The review’s Process Roadmapping Tool addresses integration from another direction. Users select an objective, such as oxygen production, and construct the functional sequence needed to achieve it. Technology cards can then be assigned to those functions, exposing dependencies, alternatives, and missing capabilities.

The framework organizes work into prospecting, excavation, beneficiation, processing, and products and purification. A developer can identify the input that its equipment requires and the output that downstream equipment must accept. An agency can examine which national capabilities fit an international program and which parts still require partners.

The tool is described as a static Visio diagram, and its technology coverage is not exhaustive. Power, communications, navigation, thermal management, and autonomy remain necessary even though they sit outside the review’s central roadmap scope. A complete system assessment must bring those supporting functions back into the production architecture.

Commercial Demand Must Match Demonstrated Supply

The review’s commercial argument rests principally on supplying mission needs, particularly consumables. Water, oxygen, and construction materials could reduce transportation requirements or support longer operations. The size of any resulting market depends on actual missions, operating locations, consumption rates, and procurement decisions.

An April 2026 Guardian report described companies raising money for lunar resource ventures. Investment interest establishes that organizations are pursuing opportunities, but it does not establish the operating cost, reliability, or profitability of a lunar production system.

The appropriate commercial comparison is the delivered cost of an accepted product at the customer’s location. An oxygen supplier must account for development, launch, landing, power, processing, storage, maintenance, financing, and transfer. Comparing lunar oxygen with the terrestrial wholesale price leaves out much of the value of avoiding transportation from Earth.

This approach to evaluating space resource markets also requires separating potential applications. Water for shielding, water for crew use, and water for propellant production involve different quality requirements and supporting equipment. Combining them into one market figure can obscure the costs and qualifications needed for each product.

The distinction between local use and Earth return is equally important. Material used beside its extraction site can avoid an additional transportation chain. A commodity returned to Earth must justify lunar departure, transit, reentry, recovery, and terrestrial distribution before competing with existing suppliers.

Discussion of lunar helium-3 economics illustrates why a valuable substance can still present a difficult production proposition. Concentration, throughput, processing requirements, transportation, and customer demand all matter. High value per unit mass cannot substitute for evidence about the complete cost of supply.

The British review includes substantial market forecasts, but those figures depend on assumptions about future missions and sustained activity. They should be treated as scenarios supporting exploration of an opportunity, rather than measured revenue or an assured customer base. The technical recommendations remain useful without assuming that the largest forecast will occur.

A reasonable implication is that early British revenue could come from instruments, engineering, testing, processing equipment, and demonstration contracts before recurring commodity sales. These activities address identifiable development needs. They could also preserve capabilities if large resource markets take longer to emerge than proponents expect.

International Partnerships and Operating Rules Shape the Opportunity

The review places British capabilities mainly within European Space Agency and NASA activities. That focus reflects the study’s scope and Britain’s established exploration relationships. It does not mean that other countries lack relevant expertise or that British technologies must serve only those two agencies.

Australia offers experience in mining, remote operations, and resource testing. Canada provides relevant robotics and resource technology development, including participation in the Aqualunar Challenge. Japan contributes exploration capabilities and studies of lunar resource production. The review presents these countries as potential partners with complementary strengths.

For Britain, collaboration can provide access to missions, facilities, operational experience, and technologies that would be expensive to reproduce nationally. It also creates dependencies on other organizations’ schedules and procurement choices. A capable British instrument can still face delays if its host mission changes.

Operating rules add another layer of uncertainty. The review describes a British preference for practical discussions about resources used at mission destinations and for transparent coordination of lunar activities. It distinguishes this near-term focus from more distant questions about returning space commodities to Earth for sale.

NASA’s explanation of the Artemis Accords emphasizes resource use consistent with the Outer Space Treaty, transparency, interoperability, and avoidance of harmful interference. Its safety-zone principles describe temporary coordination arrangements that respect free access. Those principles should not be represented as ownership of lunar territory.

In commentary published by Space.com in December 2025, Adam Urwick and Jessie Osborne argued that resource governance needs clearer rules. They highlighted uncertainty around access, coordination, scientific protection, and commercial activity. Their argument identifies policy questions relevant to resource development, rather than evidence that a complete international operating framework has already been agreed.

Technical coordination is also necessary. Producers and customers must agree on product purity, pressure, temperature, storage, transfer interfaces, and methods for verifying delivery. Excavators and processing systems must exchange material predictably. Scientific instruments need contamination controls so that industrial activity does not compromise measurements.

The review’s most defensible strategic implication is selective participation. Britain could develop capabilities with clear functions, suitable testing pathways, and identifiable international users. Progress would then be measured through validated interfaces, integrated demonstrations, sustained performance, and accepted products. Those measures provide a firmer basis for investment than broad claims about national leadership or future resource wealth.

Summary

The UK ISRU Technology Review identifies a credible collection of British capabilities, particularly in prospecting instruments, material handling, oxygen extraction, and materials science. It also documents the difficulty of advancing those capabilities through funding gaps, environmental testing, integration, and flight opportunities.

Its findings support a focused approach to development. Technologies need defined inputs, measurable outputs, reliable interfaces, and customers whose requirements are understood. Readiness ratings and resource detections contribute to that assessment, but neither establishes industrial production capacity or commercial viability.

The potential British contribution extends beyond supplying lunar commodities. Instruments, testing services, processing equipment, engineering, and operational support could serve international programs during their development. Sustained resource production would require additional evidence that complete systems can operate reliably and deliver useful products at an acceptable cost.

Appendix: Useful Books Available on Amazon

• The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement
• The Value of the Moon: How to Explore, Live, and Prosper in Space Using the Moon’s Resources

Appendix: Top Questions Answered in This Article

What Is In-Situ Resource Utilization?

In-situ resource utilization means producing useful supplies from materials available at a space mission’s destination. Examples include extracting oxygen from lunar minerals, recovering water from ice-bearing material, and using regolith for shielding or construction. The intended benefit is to reduce transportation requirements or support operations that would otherwise need additional Earth deliveries.

Is the UK Review an Approved Government Strategy?

No. The report states that it is an independent assessment and does not represent national policy. Its findings describe capabilities, development barriers, and possible opportunities. Recommendations for longer funding, demonstrations, or a coordinated national approach should not be interpreted as approved missions or committed government spending.

Which British Capabilities Appear Strongest?

The review identifies prospecting as a particular British strength and highlights opportunities in excavation, material handling, oxygen extraction, and materials processing. These findings refer to capabilities documented through its research and consultation. They do not establish that Britain operates a complete resource production chain or leads every technology area it examined.

Why Is Resource Prospecting Necessary Before Production?

Prospecting determines the location, concentration, composition, and accessibility of potential resources. These properties influence equipment selection, processing methods, power requirements, and expected output. Orbital observations identify promising areas, but local measurements are needed to understand conditions at a proposed operating site. Resource detection alone does not establish economic recoverability.

What Is PROSPECT Designed to Do?

PROSPECT is an ESA payload designed to drill into lunar material, collect samples, and analyze their composition and volatile content. Leonardo leads the payload and drilling system, and the Open University leads its ProSPA analytical instrument suite. ESA lists a planned 2027 flight. Its measurements and extraction experiments would support development rather than constitute continuous industrial production.

Can Lunar Oxygen Be Collected Directly From the Ground?

Oxygen in lunar regolith is chemically bound within minerals rather than present as breathable gas. Extraction requires chemical or electrochemical processing that separates it from those minerals. The resulting product must then be collected, purified, stored, and delivered. Production cost depends on the feedstock, process, power supply, and supporting equipment.

What Did MOXIE Demonstrate on Mars?

MOXIE demonstrated oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. Its operations generated 122 grams of oxygen, with its best performance reaching 12 grams per hour. The experiment validated an important process under Martian conditions. It did not demonstrate the complete production, storage, and transfer infrastructure needed to supply a crewed mission.

Why Do Technology Readiness Ratings Need Qualification?

Readiness ratings describe the maturity of a technology for a particular application and environment. They do not automatically establish production volume, operating lifetime, or commercial cost. The UK review explicitly excluded scale from its readiness definitions. A highly rated instrument may remain far from the requirements of an industrial resource service.

How Could British Organizations Earn Revenue Before Commodity Production?

Organizations could provide scientific instruments, engineering, testing, processing equipment, and demonstration support to international programs. These services address development needs before recurring purchases of lunar water or oxygen become established. Revenue would still depend on contracts, successful performance, and procurement decisions. A future commodity forecast is not equivalent to an existing customer agreement.

What Evidence Would Support a Commercial Resource Business?

A credible business would need measured feedstock properties, demonstrated production rates, acceptable product quality, and reliable integrated operation. It would also need a defined customer, delivery location, and full cost model covering equipment, transportation, power, maintenance, and financing. Commercial assessment must compare delivered supply with the customer’s alternatives, including delivery from Earth.

Appendix: Glossary of Key Terms

In-Situ Resource Utilization

The production or use of useful materials from resources found at a space mission’s destination. It can include oxygen extraction, water recovery, shielding, and construction. Its value depends on whether local production supports mission needs more effectively than transporting equivalent supplies from Earth.

Regolith

The loose surface layer covering solid rock on the Moon and many other planetary bodies. It contains dust, fragmented rock, and material altered by impacts and exposure to space. Its composition and physical properties affect excavation, handling, processing, and construction equipment.

Volatile

A substance that can be released as gas or vapor under relevant temperature and pressure conditions. In lunar resource studies, the term includes water and certain other compounds or implanted gases. Their location, retention, and behavior influence sampling, extraction, containment, and storage methods.

Permanently Shadowed Region

A location, commonly within a polar crater, that receives no direct sunlight. Extremely low temperatures can preserve ice and other volatile substances. These regions present difficult operating conditions because equipment must manage limited solar power, severe cold, terrain constraints, and potential communications limitations.

Prospecting

The investigation of potential resources to determine their location, quantity, concentration, composition, and accessibility. Space prospecting can combine orbital observations with surface instruments, drilling, and sample analysis. Its results help select sites, design processing systems, and evaluate whether proposed extraction activities are technically and economically credible.

Beneficiation

The preparation of excavated material by separating useful fractions from less useful material before further processing. Techniques can sort particles by size or exploit electrical, magnetic, and compositional differences. Successful beneficiation can improve feedstock consistency or reduce the quantity requiring energy-intensive treatment.

Electrolysis

A process that uses electrical energy to drive chemical reactions. In resource production, it can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen or help extract oxygen and metals from mineral feedstock. Equipment requirements depend on the substances processed, the temperature, and the chosen electrolyte or reactor design.

Technology Readiness Level

A structured rating describing how far a technology has progressed from basic research toward demonstrated operation. The rating applies to a defined development context. It does not independently establish industrial output, operating lifetime, maintenance requirements, commercial profitability, or suitability for a substantially larger production scale.

Regolith Simulant

A manufactured or selected terrestrial material used to reproduce particular properties of planetary regolith for testing. A simulant may represent mineral composition, particle size, or mechanical behavior. Its suitability depends on the experiment, and successful testing does not reproduce every condition encountered on the Moon.

Interoperability

The ability of equipment, systems, or organizations to work together through compatible interfaces and agreed operating requirements. For resource production, this includes material transfer, product specifications, power, communications, and verification methods. Interoperability helps individual technologies function within a complete production and delivery system.