Deadline: 25-Sep-2025
The Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) at the U.S. Department of Energy has announced the Reliable Ore Characterization with Keystone Sensing (ROCKS) program to accelerate U.S. mineral independence and strengthen critical mineral supply chains.
The program objectives focus on transformative innovations in drilling technology, sensing and analysis, and other disruptive approaches to deliver significant improvements in orebody delineation and characterization. The program priorities include increasing penetration rates in hard-rock drilling, lowering drilling costs, enabling high recovery and quality of continuous core, developing near real-time data acquisition, enhancing spatial resolution and sensitivity of mineralogical and geochemical measurements, accelerating data turnaround time, advancing imaging and data fusion analysis, and exploring technologies for untapped resources such as REE-enriched clays, placer deposits, and seafloor minerals. The technical performance targets include reducing time to characterization by more than five times the baseline, limiting block-level resource uncertainty to ±10%, reducing volumetric characterization costs to $0.05 per cubic meter or less, and keeping total characterization costs below 0.5% of gross metal value.
The program will support innovations that enable rapid, high-resolution, and cost-effective assessment of ore deposits with reduced uncertainty. By accelerating feasibility assessments from years to months, ROCKS will advance the development of abundant domestic rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical minerals. The program is designed to aid mine development, minimize waste rock, streamline processing, and improve U.S. competitiveness in mineral resources. Technologies of interest are grouped into three categories: drilling technology for faster and more efficient core recovery, sensing and analysis for higher resolution and faster measurements, and other novel approaches that disrupt existing characterization practices. Field testing, technoeconomic analyses, and partnerships with industry are strongly encouraged to maximize impact and commercialization potential.
Approximately $40 million in funding is available to be shared between this program and a companion funding opportunity, with ARPA-E anticipating 10–12 awards ranging between $2 million and $5 million each. The anticipated period of performance is from June 2026 to June 2029, with concept papers due by September 25, 2025, and award announcements expected in June 2026.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
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