Abstract
Research is ongoing to develop an experimental volatiles extraction system that can demonstrate a heating process for releasing helium-3 (3He) and other valuable lunar volatiles from lunar regolith. Beyond the Apollo and Luna program lunar samples, there is no regolith or regolith simulant implanted with solar wind volatiles that is available. A device, named the Solar Wind Implanter (SWIM), has been developed to implant helium into batches of JSC-1A simulant. It uses a voltage difference between planar electrodes to accelerate helium ions (up to the average solar-wind speed of 450 km/s) into a thin, falling sheet of regolith simulant. Initial implantation tests have been conducted and SWIM is being calibrated by performing tests to determine electrode current under varying operational parameters and by measuring the dose and temperature release pattern of helium in implanted samples.
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