A Mining Engineering Approach to Mining Lunar Regolith

The strategic approach to mine planning and mining method and equipment selection used for the study of new mining operations on Earth is described and used in this paper. It is recommended by the authors that a similar diligent mining engineering approach should be followed when investigating potential mining projects on the Moon, particularly as the engineering work on these projects is expected to be side-tracked by logistical, processing and transport constraints. Mining engineering evaluations of an ore body should follow the stages discussed in this paper. The applicability of these stages to mining on the Moon was illustrated by providing an example investigation of mining lunar regolith with methods currently used for mineralized sand operations on Earth.