LIST technology on the moon

The Luxembourg Government recently announced a series of measures to position Luxembourg as a European hub in the exploration and use of space resources. In the framework of its missions as a Research and Technology Organisation (RTO), the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) actively supports the government by placing its expertise in space technologies and its capacity for innovation at their service.

In this context, on 2 March 2017, the Luxembourg Government and the Tokyo-based space robotics company ispace Inc. signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with focus on developing miniaturized technology to discover, map, and utilize resources on the Moon.

Within the framework of this MoU, ispace intends to focus, through its European office based in Luxembourg, on business development, R&D and on several key technical services, including payload development, engineering and integration. Luxembourg contributes notably by providing funding through national R&D grants or programs of the European Space Agency (ESA) to relevant research and development activities such as the ispace “roving spectrometer”.

This project aims to bring an innovative mass spectrometer developed by LIST to the surface of the Moon. It will explore elemental compositions of the lunar ice and regolith. 

Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Étienne Schneider, stated: “The cooperation with LIST as a renowned research organisation and the collaboration with a key player of the local innovation ecosystem like Paul Wurth provide ispace a promising starting position as a new actor in the Luxembourg space sector.”

“The development of technology solutions for the space sector is a key area of the Materials and Technology Department (MRT) of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology,” stated Prof. Jens Kreisel, Director of the MRT-LIST. “Within this strategy, the present collaboration with ispace is an excellent fit for us”, added Dr. Tom Wirtz, who heads the Advanced Instrumentation for Ion Nano-Analytics (AINA) group at LIST. "We have a mass spectrometry technology that is of major interest for space applications, and ispace has unique means to deploy this technology to space.”

“With strong technological, legal and financial support, we are convinced that Luxembourg is the best place for us to begin our European operations” said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace and the leader of team HAKUTO, one of the finalists of the Google Lunar XPRIZE.

> See the full version of the press release of the Ministry of Economy

Credits photo: MECO