Microwave rig that pulls water from icy lunar test soil, aimed at a lander
TL;DR Thawbench builds and tests a microwave unit that heats frozen lunar soil and catches the water that comes off. It starts life as a lab rig sold as a test service and paid for by agency contracts, and then it aims for a small demonstration payload on a future Indian or partner lander.
Water near the Moon's south pole could become drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel, but nobody has pulled it out of real lunar soil at a useful scale. Lab work says the method is promising and leaky.
A 2025 study heated 513 g blocks of icy simulant at 800 W and removed 90–96% of the water, yet only about 30–52% reached the collector, and 43–64% of the power was lost to protective parts[1]. An Open University team found the wettest samples did worst, with extraction falling to 32%[2]. And India's own water data comes from LUPEX, which won't launch before 2028[3].
What it does, in regulatory terms: research hardware and, later, a flight demonstration payload. It sells no water and claims no resource rights.
Thawbench designs a sealed microwave cavity with a cold trap, sized for a few kilograms of frozen simulant. The first product is a ground rig in a thermal-vacuum chamber, offered as a test service - agencies and universities send their simulant mixes and get back extraction, collection and energy-per-gram data. The second is a shoebox-sized demo unit built for a lander payload slot, with flight qualification paid for by an agency contract.
The engineering work goes into the two losses the lab papers flag, which are water escaping before the collector and power soaked up by shielding instead of soil[1].
The seed pitched mobile units that solve water scarcity on the Moon, and I reframed it. No reserves are proven and nobody on the Moon will buy water this decade, so a full plant has no customer. A tested rig and a flight demo do have buyers today.
Early money comes from agency and research contracts. Think testing for ISRO centres, partner agencies and lunar firms, plus academic labs that don't have a vacuum-rated rig. Later, a mission team pays for a flight unit as a hosted payload. Prices get set contract by contract, and I couldn't find a public price list.
The Indian Space Policy 2023 lets private firms recover space resources and tells ISRO to study resource use[4]. The government approved Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX in March 2025, with a focus on polar water[5]. Abroad, US lunar-resource startups already sell resource harvesting and simulant testing to governments[6].
There is no public figure for spending on lunar water-extraction testing or demo payloads. The solid signals are mission-level - LUPEX will drill 1.5 m and measure water quantity and quality[3], and one US startup reports over US$500 million in binding helium-3 purchase orders[6], which is a company claim.
The adjacent number is IN-SPACe's target of a US$44 billion Indian space economy by 2033[7].
University groups in the UK and China lead the published microwave work[1][2], but they publish papers and don't sell hardware. That US startup builds resource harvesting and test capabilities for paying clients[6].
I found no Indian company building extraction hardware. Indian firms that make lunar soil simulant are your suppliers here, not your rivals.
| Difficulty | Hard (61/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹2.5–4.5 Cr |
| Time to launch | 24–36 months |
Getting a rig to work in a lab is doable. The hard bits are vacuum and cryogenic testing, sealing a hot vapour path and building flight-grade hardware, and then you have to win a payload slot from an agency that has never flown a private Indian resource experiment.
Yes, though not on day one. Lab work needs no space permit, but a flight demonstration does.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to judge whether a result is real. Every efficiency number still needs a repeat run and a human who checks the setup.
Want to work out the AI layer for Thawbench? Talk to Yash →
This suits a team from a materials, microwave or space-hardware lab that has won agency grants before. It is not for you if you need revenue inside two years. First prove the rig beats the published 30–52% collection rate[1] on the same simulant, in vacuum, because without that nothing else matters.
Plan for roughly ₹2.5–4.5 Cr, most of it on vacuum and cryogenic test equipment and engineers. Grants can cover part of the early lab work.
Not for lab work. A flight demonstration needs IN-SPACe authorisation, usually through the lander operator, and export rules apply if parts go abroad.
Yes, and the buyers are mostly space agencies and lander teams anywhere. You will need your own country's space licence and export rules for any flight.
The free Thawbench validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the authorisation and export checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for agencies and labs, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Thawbench or something close to it? The make-or-break step is turning lab results into a funded payload slot, and I'm happy to think that through with you. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.