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About

Joel Sercel is a visionary aerospace engineer and entrepreneur whose work is reshaping how we think about space resource utilization. His primary research areas center on asteroid mining, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), and the development of technologies to extract water and volatiles from celestial bodies. Sercel’s most significant contribution is the concept of "Optical Mining," a revolutionary approach that uses concentrated sunlight to excavate asteroid surfaces and drive off water and other valuable volatiles for use as propellant and mission consumables. This work, detailed in papers with over a dozen citations, forms the backbone of the Apis mission architecture. He also led the NASA-chartered Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) Formulation Assessment and Support Team (FAST), producing a highly influential final report (17 citations) that helped shape the agency’s approach to asteroid interactions. Further demonstrating his applied vision, Sercel conceived the Snow Badger mission concept, which pairs Artemis astronauts with autonomous RASSOR robots to trench for lunar ice. His work on "Transformers for Lunar Extreme Environments" also outlines how solar power can enable long-term operations in permanently shadowed lunar craters, directly supporting a sustainable human presence on the Moon and Mars.