The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's In Situ Resource Utilization Project, which studies ways astronauts can use resources found at lunar landing sites, wanted to demonstrate how people might prospect for resources on the moon and make their own oxygen from lunar rocks and soil. Hawaii's volcanic soil is very similar to regolith, the moon's soil, NASA said.

The space agency currently estimates on-site lunar resources could generate one to two metric tons of oxygen annually -- approximately the amount of oxygen that four to six people living at a lunar outpost might breathe in a year.

"The field demonstrations in Hawaii showed how lunar materials might be extracted," the space agency said. "It also showcased the hydrogen reduction system used to manufacture oxygen from those materials and how the oxygen would be stored.

Other tested concepts include a lunar wheel Michelin North America of Greenville, S.C., developed; a lunar sample coring drill the Northern Center for Advanced Technology in Canada developed for NASA; and a night vision camera called TriDAR developed by Canada's Neptec Co. for the rover's navigation and drill site selection.