CT Manufacturer Joins Elite Group of Companies That Have Landed on the Moon

Mott Corp. has achieved a rare distinction in the aerospace industry, becoming one of only a handful of companies to successfully operate technology on the moon’s surface.

The Farmington-based precision filtration company announced that its custom-engineered flow control assembly has completed testing in the harsh lunar environment, as part of NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) mission.

“Successfully operating on the lunar surface is a milestone that very few companies can claim,” said Sean Kane, Mott’s general manager of aerospace and defense and vice president of business development.

NASA’s PRIME-1 mission is the first attempt to demonstrate that future astronauts can live off the land by extracting and using lunar materials rather than hauling everything from Earth.

The experiment combines two key technologies: a drill called Trident that can bore up to 3 feet into the lunar soil, and the MSolo mass spectrometer that analyzes what the drill brings up.

Mott’s component was used in the MSolo mass spectrometer, which began operations after landing on March 6, near the moon’s south pole.

MSolo’s primary job was to examine soil samples for water ice and other volatile compounds that could be converted into drinking water, breathable oxygen or even rocket fuel.

Mott’s flow control assembly was designed to enable precise control of volatile gas samples extracted by the robotic drilling platform.

The technology, according to Mott, supports NASA’s broader goal of measuring the moon’s subsurface volatile content — data essential for future manned lunar missions and establishing a permanent human presence on the moon.

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