Abstract
Introduction: The concept of the Microwave Heating Demonstrator (MHD) payload was developed as part of the collaborative project MARVEL (Microwave heating Apparatus for Regolith Variant Experiments for Lunar ISRU) between the Open University, Added Value Solutions UK Ltd. and VIPER RF in 2019 [1] to explore the potential of microwave heating method for lunar construction and resource extraction, and serve as a viable option for selection on future NASA/ESA missions to the Moon [2]. As part of the MHD cavity design development, we conducted intensive analyses of the microwave heating performance via lab experiments and computational simulations. Through these experiments, we improved our understanding of the microwave heating behaviour of lunar soil/simulants [3,4] and discovered a few challenges [1] that have been addressed via an updated MHD payload design. In this presentation, we will discuss the up-to-date design of the MHD payload (Fig. 1) and a new set of experiments using a prototype of the barebone system. As a result of the recent updates, the payload length is slightly increased from 400 to 450 mm (450 x 400 x 250 mm), but a reduction in the overall mass (12 kg to 11 kg). In addition, the peak power requirement is also reduced from 677 W to 450 W, with the expected DC-to-RF efficiency >60%.