This is the ISRULib Wiki documentation site. The ISRULib list of contributors can be found here. Please cite ISRULib as:

Guerrero-Gonzalez, F. J. et al. (2023). ISRULib documentation site. URL: https://wiki.tum.de/display/lpe/ISRULib.

ISRULib General Description

ISRULib was created at the Professorship of Lunar and Planetary Exploration (LPE) of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) as an open-source database of ISRU readable and easily-understandable models that can be incorporated into specific analysis and simulation tools, and be used by the entire community to carry out high-level technological trade-offs and preliminary architectural definitions. ISRULib is a component- and system-level library for ISRU architectures, with models covering the entire ISRU chain of water, oxygen, and metal production; from the excavation and processing of planetary regolith to the storage of finalized products. The models estimate mass and power budgets, as well as the performance of the latest technological advances for individual processes, based on analytical parametric calculations, extrapolated experimental results, surrogate models from numerical simulations, and already existing ISRU hardware.

Complementary information about ISRULib and related analysis and simulation tools developed at TUM can be found here. ISRULib can be downloaded and used from its Gitlab project.

The goal is to keep ISRULib alive and constantly updated. To this end, if you have any inquiries or want to collaborate to expand ISRULib by including your models in the database, please contact Francisco J. Guerrero-Gonzalez (f.guerrero@tum.de). ISRULib Gitlab project includes a model template and its coding guidelines to facilitate the inclusion of new models in the database. The proposed models will be subject to a peer review before being finally included in ISRULib.

License

ISRULib is published under the following open-source license:

ISRULib License

Copyright 2023, Professorship of Lunar and Planetary Exploration, Technical University of Munich.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files, without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the software, and to permit persons to whom the software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

  • The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software, as well as a reference to the author(s) listed above. Scientific publications which use this model shall cite this ISRULib documentation attributing credit to the named authors in the documentation.
  • The software is provided without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages, or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort, or otherwise, arising from, out of, or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.

Currently Available ISRULib Models

ISRULib follows an issue tree structure as seen below. 



The most recent version of the models can be found in its Gitlab project. There, instructions on how to create a new model, as well as how their overall structure is defined, to can be found. The currently available models are:

  • RASSOR Excavator
  • Polaris Excavator
  • Auger Conveyor (Screw Conveyor)
  • Vibratory Conveyor



  • HRI Fluidized Bed Reactor


  • Lapple Cyclone
  • PEM Electrolyzer





  • High-Pressure Storage

Software Requirements 

ISRULib models are written in Python 3.0 making use of Jupyter Notebooks, which is a web-based interactive computing platform that combines live code, equations, narrative text, visualizations, etc. In this way, readable and easily-understandable ISRU models can be built. A simple way to utilize ISRULib is to download the open-source Anaconda package and environment management system, which already includes Python 3.0 and Jupyter Notebooks.

ISRULib Publications

  • Guerrero-Gonzalez, F. J. & Reiss, P. (2023). Holistic system modeling: Towards the design of scalable ISRU architectures. Space Resources Week. [Download poster]
  • Guerrero-Gonzalez, F. J. & Zabel, P. (2023). System analysis of an ISRU production plant: Extraction of metals and oxygen from lunar regolith. Acta Astronautica, vol. 203, pp. 187–201. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2022.11.050.
  • Dietrich, C. F. (2023). ISRULib: Parametric Analytical Modeling of Regolith Excavation and Handling Hardware. Semester thesis. Technical University of Munich.
  • Schuster, F. (2023). ISRULib: Parametric Analytical Modeling of H2/O2 Electrolysis, Liquefaction and Cryostorage. Bachelor thesis. Technical University of Munich.
  • Guerrero-Gonzalez, F. J. (2021). Analysis of an In-Situ Material Production Concept for Potential Thermal Applications in a Lunar Mission. Master's thesis. Technical University of Munich. [Download manuscript]
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