“It’s awesome,” Metzger says of the demonstration. “WINE [World Is Not Enough] successfully mined the soil, made rocket propellant, and launched itself on a jet of steam extracted from the simulant. We could potentially use this technology to hop on the Moon, Ceres, Europa, Titan, Pluto, the poles of Mercury, asteroids — anywhere there is water and sufficiently low gravity.”
WINE, which is the size of a microwave oven, mines the water from the surface then makes it into steam to fly to a new location and repeat. Therefore, it is a rocket that never runs out of fuel and can theoretically explore “forever.”
https://today.ucf.edu/steam-powered-asteroid-hoppers-developed-ucf-collaboration/
Go Knights! Not that I follow the UCF football team, but they're nice enough to host the regional high school robotics championship every year.
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