SUMMARY: Researcher Dr. Mike Duke has been working for several years to create a rover that could use lunar dust to create propellant for use by future explorers. Over the course of four years, Duke and his team have created a robotic excavator that can scoop up soil. In the future, this excavator could deliver the soil to a Moon-based extraction system that would process the soil to draw out hydrogen. In a future scenario, propellant created on the Moon could be launched back into space to refill spacecraft relatively inexpensively.

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