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EU Moon Science

Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust (gizmodo.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the rare-air dept.
"European researchers are working on a system that can churn out breathable oxygen from simulated samples of moon dust," reports Gizmodo:
"Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel," explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release. Lomax, along with ESA research fellow Alexandre Meurisse, are currently plugging away at a prototype that could eventually lead to exactly that: oxygen production from lunar dust. They're currently testing their system at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), which is based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Their prototype is working, but adjustments will be required to make it suitable for use on the Moon, such as reducing its operating temperature....

Interestingly, ESTEC is not treating the metals as an unwanted byproduct. The team is currently looking into various ways of exploiting these metals in a lunar environment, such as transforming them into compounds for 3D printing.
The European Space Agency points out that samples returned from the lunar surface were made up of 40-45% percent oxygen by weight.
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Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust More

Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust

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  • So.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday January 19, 2020 @04:48PM (#59635604)

    ...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?

    • Re:So.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by afaiktoit ( 831835 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @04:55PM (#59635622)
      the moon's gift shop

    • ...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?

      NASA will be launching a simulated Moon shortly for people to colonize. It'll be next to the real Moon for easy tourist access.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • based on known the composition of previously collected lunar samples

        Other "simulated Lunar regolith" materials are available. If you follow a certain NASA researcher in rover wheels on Twitter, you may have seen a 20-tweet-long thread if his at the weekend about why their simulated Lunar regolith" can't match the known tribological properties of Lunar regolith because they can't make such dusty materials for use in an un-enclosed workshop. The whole topic is considerably more complicated than it appears at

    • ...where do we get simulated moon dust on the moon?

      You misunderstand. It's dust from a simulated moon.

  • This has been what was intended since the '60s. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @05:10PM (#59635648) Journal

    This has been what has been intended, for lunar colonies, since at least the '60s.
      - Many kinds of rock - including lunar rock - are metal oxides.
      - With sufficient energy you can tear them apart, yielding large quantities of oxygen (suitable for breathing) and metal suitable for building.
      - The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger, without an atmosphere or clouds to attenuate it. With 1/6th gravity and no weather it's easy to build solar collectors. (Two weeks day, two weeks night, so you need storage or you only run energy-hiungry processes during the two-week day)

    It's nice to see people are actually working on designs for the machines needed. It's another sign that, with the current round of (largely privatized) spce travel, we may be on our way back to the moon. This time to stay, rather than for a short visit and look-around.

    • " - The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger,"

      But then it pauses for 2 weeks.

      • 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. So the moon only gets sunlight 50% of the time on average? On Earth it's typically 12 hours on, 12 hours off. 50% either way.

      • " - The sun shines just as strongly on the moon as on the earth - actually substantially stronger,"

        But then it pauses for 2 weeks.

        Sounds like the sun-tracking motors on the panels will use less power than they do down here on Earth, that's yet another win for the Moon, thanks for pointing it out.

        • Sounds like bad news for Matt Damon's poop potatoes though.
          • He makes potatoes from shit? Who does he sell them through? Gwyneth Paltrow and her vaginal candle company?

        • Sun tracking is falling out of favor these days. Panels have gotten cheap enough that adding more / using a bigger panel gives you more power per buck than tracking the sun and getting rid of the cosine falloff. Also, on a densely-packed solar array you'd lose about as much from shadowing the next panel as you gained by having the panel normal to the sun.

          Now the economics might work out differently on the moon - especially if they're building the panels, supports, and trackers from lunar material. There'

          • Sun tracking is falling out of favor these days.

            Irrelevant. You can keep your stupid fads and shit.

            Don't blather about cheap panels, we're talking about on the moon you're not going to use cheap panels.

            Blah blah blah. something something about steam, but see above. Why would I care about the latest fads in steam engines?

    • With 1/6th gravity and no weather it's easy to build solar collectors.

      It's easier to build nuclear reactors.

      Let's assume we have solar panels on the moon. How will we protect them from meteors? The moon gets impacted by them all the time and there's no atmosphere to burn them up. A nuclear power plant can be put under a concrete dome or a thick steel plate like we do on Earth. If we are going to dig up the dirt for oxygen, and liberating it from the many metal oxides, then some of that oxygen will come from uranium and thorium oxides. There will be no shortage of fuel.

      On

    • I remember the 1960's, including "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. The amount of water involved is prodigious, and awkward to refine from rock. Given the feasibility of solar sails, why wouldn't it make more sense to bring quite large icy blocks from the rings of Jupiter in years-long or decades-long orbits to impact designated locations on the Moon? One such ice metior, roughly 100 meters wide carrying roughly half a million cubic meters of waterfor quite a large colony with life support,

      • I think you mean "from the rings of Saturn". Thought Jupiter does have rings too - rather more diffuse than those of Saturn, but comparable to Uranus' rings (Oh, I can hear the comedians going on interminably about the rings around your anus. Freud had a diagnosis for people like you. And nappies.) ; Neptune's rings seem incomplete, which is decidedly weird, and Earth's rings are artificial (and trivial in visible light). In practical terms, going to the asteroid belt and chewing up a C-type asteroid would

        • I meant the rings of Jupiter. They're much closer than Saturn, and the solar sails much more efficient than sending the sails and returning them all the way from Saturn. On review, the rings of Jupiter may not have enough ice to easily harvest. Some steroids may be feasible, but planetary rings would allow a great deal more choice and less need to pre-select a particular target.

          • I'd like to see your technology for harvesting ring grains in the order of 15 microns.

            I'd also remind you that the radiation environment around Jupiter is pretty nasty. They had to take a fair bit of care about the design of the Juno mission's orbital programme to keep it's likelihood of failure due to radiation damage low enough to be acceptable. Now that the main observation targets have been accomplished they're "searching for the core" (by probing the close-in gravity field, by flying through it) while

            • Perhaps use the solar mirror for harvesting?

              I'd not realized the Jupiter rings were so dusty, and so poor in ice. I'd thought having a target so much larger would help astronavigation. But I _do_ like the idea of tapping the Jupiter trojans.

              • I would think the Trojans are a very workable solution. But they're asteroids (in effect), and the Main Belt asteroids are closer. Since we were talking about rings, I noticed this paper in my daily listing of new submissions to Arxiv. It may interest you (no, I haven't read it yet. Coffee first!) Effects of neighbouring planets on the formation of resonant dust rings in the inner Solar System [arxiv.org]. Note that here they're looking at rings around the Sun, and their interactions with closely packed planets, but s

                • The Trojans are in a relatively stable location. I'd anticipate that they'd be much easier to vector to and connect with: if one is unavailable or unsuitable, simply choose another nearby.

                  Also, "distance" is not the limitation one might expect with solar sails. There is a casual analysis of trip durations by various means to various planets at http://www.astronomycafe.net/F... [astronomycafe.net] Jupiter via solar sail is only 100 days. Mars is 29 days. Those trajectories are apparently not docking trajectories, The surprising

                  • The Trojans are in a stable location compared to ? ... a moving target.

                    Once the orbit is well enough defined to "reacquire" an object at a third opposition (as seen from Earth, so about 3.25 years, not 36-odd years for Jupiter and attendants to go round the Sun thrice), it's considered well-enough known for the MPC to change the temporary designation (e.g. 2016 MU69) to a permanent one ("486958", and possibly a name such as "Arrokoth"). Sometimes you can improve the orbit enough to reach that confidence if

                    • The Trojans are a more stable orbit than most asteroids, which are unpredictably perturbed, primarily by Jupiter. I'd expect minor perturbations of such inherently unstable orbits to be relatively large and take time tracking and docking with them, compared to the more long-term stable orbits of a planetary ring or the Trojans that you brought up. Sadly, they don't seem to have a lot of ice, which is what _I_ was looking for in solar sail harvesting range.

                    • Both Trojans and main belt asteroids have been around for 4.5 Ga, so their stabilities in any meaningful sense are pretty similar. The forces that perturb main belt are the same as the ones that perturb Trojans. What produced the Trojans was Jupiter crashing around in the Solar system's orbital parameters like a bull in a china shop (actually like two bulls having a fight in a china shop, since Jupiter was probably in a resonance tussle with Saturn at the time). As part of that event, a small proportion of

                    • The Trojans are "stable", in the L4 and L5 points. Please do look up "Lagrange points" and why orbiting objects tend to accumulate there at L4 and L5: Earth has similar orbital points relative to the moon, which is why various space stations are planned for them. The other Lagrange points, such as the one on the opposite side of the sun from Jupiter, are less stable. Even small perturbations tend to accumulate and migrate the satellites from that meta-stable location.

                      I'm not saying the asteroids jumble from

                    • Interesting things, Trojans. Mars has 4 of them - (5261)Eureka, (101429)1998 VF31, (121514)1999 UJ7, and 2001 DH4 (that last one hadn't been confirmed by the MPC at time of this publication [arxiv.org] but has since been given the permanent designation (63273), but no name TTBOMK) At least 3 of them have different compositions (and by implication, probably originated in different parts of the main belt, and/ or formed at different solar distances before the Grand Tack or Nice movements). Eureka seems most similar to an
                    • I know perfectly well what Lagrange regions are. Their description as "stable" is in contrast with unstable areas like mean-motion resonance regions (such as the Kirkwood gaps in the main belt of the asteroids. That doesn't mean that Lagrange regions are the only "stable" areas of space for orbits to pas through. After all, the Moon isn't now, and never has been, in a Lagrange region of the Earth-Sun system, but it's orbit isn't exactly unstable.

                      I'd expect the profit from bulky ice asteroids delivered to Ea

                    • I'm still looking for the original sources for the 1970s surveys, but I did find a slightly later survey (a week of observations in 1996) that yielded nearly 100 new Trojans early in the digital era.

                      It has some comments that illuminate what "stable" means in respect of Lagrangian regions:

                      Recent work has shown that Trojan orbits are destabilized by collisional ejection (for which the loss rate of bodies larger than 1 km in diameter is estimated at â¼10^-3 yr^-1 ; Marzari et al. 1997) and, to a les

          • Some steroids may be feasible, but planetary rings would allow a great deal more choice and less need to pre-select a particular target.

            OIC. Typo for "asteroids". That had me puzzled for a minute or several, so I ignored it. You'll find that the grain size of all the planetary rings is pretty small, on average. Yes, Saturn does have a few lumps in the range of a few hundred m to a km or so, but they're few and far between. Which is why they stand out, in their effects on the neighbourhood, because they're r

      • The amount of water involved is prodigious, and awkward to refine from rock. Given the feasibility of solar sails, why wouldn't it make more sense to bring quite large icy blocks from the rings of Jupiter in years-long or decades-long orbits to impact designated locations on the Moon?

        Energy and time. The answer to every question about space. Also safety, the other answer to every question about space.

        There will already be humans on the Moon's surface long before a mission to Saturn's rings could even launch, let alone yield an impact. Said mission's accuracy is highly doubtful. With a bit of luck, the chunk of ice it sets in motion actually hits the Moon. Hitting somewhere in particular is a whole lot harder. I don't think people on the Lunar surface want to spend their days hopin

    • the lack of atmosphere should also prevent most incoming micro-debris from burning up, which probably makes solar collectors the #1 liability as that's about the only equipment that couldnt be dug in into the rock . Im not really a physicist but something the size of a small pebble coming in hard, hitting some tube that transports oxygen from a generator to a habitation dome for instance would be more or like insta-gib, but can be prevented by moving those below or at least under piles of collected rubble (

  • It's not quite that simple... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2020 @05:15PM (#59635652)

    According to the article, it's a pretty ugly process. First you have to heat the regolith to 950 C and immerse in a bath of molten calcium chloride salt. Then you use electrolysis to break up the metal oxides into oxygen and pure metals.

    This is going to require energy on a massive scale. You're also going to need a way to dump all that excess heat (water cooling isn't an option on the moon). You'll get oxygen, yes, but it's not exactly something you can hook to a space suit.

    -JS

    • You're also going to need a way to dump all that excess heat (water cooling isn't an option on the moon).

      Two words: Space Fan

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Nitrogen isnâ(TM)t really a problem. Itâ(TM)s inert and we donâ(TM)t use it up so any amount we transported up there we could continue to use indefinitely. Itâ(TM)s only real purpose is to dilute the oxygen and itâ(TM)s not the only inert gas we could use for that. In fact helium which is abundant on the moon is used as a. Substitute for nitrogen for both diving and medical reasons. It would make sense to use helium instead of nitrogen as the primary inert gas on the moon.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Nitrogen isnÃ(TM)t really a problem. ItÃ(TM)s inert and we donÃ(TM)t use it up

          Bloody Slashcode! The form of nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere, typically distinguished as "dinitrogen", is inert. It is pretty much useless to all living organisms (in large amounts it is a poison ; get above about 3000mbar dinitrogen pressure and you'll start feeling it's toxic effects.) For use as a nutrient - essential for making proteins and nucleic acid nucleotide pairs, for example - you need it as amines (

      • The rare thing on the moon is nitrogen.

        Hydrogen and carbon are also in short supply. In some distant future, an industrialized moon is importing liquid hydrocarbons. Cue middle-eastern political intrigue.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Sure it is. Put enough energy into something with oxygen on the moon and after much complexity extract resulting free "oxygen".
      The trick been "enough" energy and on "the moon".

    • Also, son, do you know how much energy that solar fusion reactor puts out?

      And for a small team of a dozen people and closed loops, it's not gonna be *that* much energy.

      Anyway, do you have numbers, or are you just one of those pushovers who prefer to not even think about attempting anything solely on the grounds of it requiring thinking?

  • Interesting link, also Gizmodo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @05:17PM (#59635660) Journal

    Simulated moon dust [gizmodo.com] kills cells and damages DNA.

    tldr:

    We’ve long known that moon dust could cause trouble. During the Apollo missions, astronauts complained of sneezing and watery eyes after tracking dust from their spacesuits back into their ships. Scientists need to take moon dust and rocks into account when designing lunar landing equipment because it sticks to everything. No mice or humans were sent to the moon for this new study. Instead, scientists grew both human cells and mouse cells in the lab and exposed both to a simulated lunar dust. In both cases, the moon dust could kill the cell or damage the cells’ DNA.

    • No a body with a skin an other systems that exist to protext said cells.

      Go sprinkle some salt on a few cells from an inner organ, and see how long they last.

      The asbestos-like properties will likely be more of a problem.

      If anything, they need a clean inside/outside separation. Which the new space suits that mount to a wall concenitently provide.
      It's almost as if they had thought about such things and as if that was their job.

  • Of course you can extract metals from their oxides with fiendish amounts of energy input, it's how we do it here on Earth too for many metals like aluminum and titanium.

    So they're heating the stuff to 950 deg C (1750 F) with a catalyst? Not impressed.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • "Fiendish amounts of energy input" sounds all horrible, until you factor in that giant ball of thermonuclear fire that's outputting horrendous amounts of energy for free. All you have to do is collect it.

        Is that all? Tell me something, what do those collectors weigh? How much power and energy can we expect? How does that compare to nuclear power? Do the math and you will find solar power completely inadequate.

        But hey, start off with a negative tone.. That usually gets things done..

        Let's start off by doing some math based on real physics. There will be no moon base powered by solar panels. They will have nuclear power. They might have some solar collectors for little things here and there, just like we use solar pocket calculators here and now, but the bulk of their power

        • You're so triggered and religious, it seeps out between the letters. The more emotional people argue, the less their view comes from a point of cluefulness.
          So just shut it.

          We already got a fusion reactor in the sky. Call me when you can build something wven remotely equivalent. In power output, cleanliness, long-term viability, lack of waste, etc. And I will tell you that we already got one that good.

          • You're so triggered and religious, it seeps out between the letters.

            Said the sun worshiper.

            We already got a fusion reactor in the sky. Call me when you can build something wven remotely equivalent. In power output, cleanliness, long-term viability, lack of waste, etc. And I will tell you that we already got one that good.

            Sure, those solar collectors work real nice at local midnight. I'm sure the thoughts of a sun shining on the other side of the moon will keep a lunar base warm one week into a lunar night, with only another week to go.

        • Your stupidity is beyond believe.

          https://www.amazon.com/Aluminu... [amazon.com]

          That makes you a roughly 100square meter solar furnace. With roughly 100kW yield.

          Costs nearly nothing and is probably a billion times cheaper than an equally sized nuclear reactor ... ah, not a billion, only 10 million times, my fault.

      • very hard, since that "giant magnifying glass" would need to weigh more than a moon base. Unless they build it on site with say.... a nuclear reactor outputting megawatts to melt and refine silicon dioxide. At which point you don't need a huge magnifying glass, do you?

    • So they're heating the stuff to 950 deg C (1750 F) with a catalyst? Not impressed.

      They'll have to do this without the carbon electrodes that we use on Earth. Carbon we currently get from coal. Carbon electrodes that consumes the oxygen from the aluminum ores to release CO2. We don't want CO2, we want O2 without the carbon, because O2 is something we need to breathe.

      This will likely be a desirable process on Earth because it does not release CO2 into the air, and it doesn't require electrodes made of coal.

      • not really, the carbon from those electrodes are negligible part of CO2 load on earth, they don't matter

        • not really, the carbon from those electrodes are negligible part of CO2 load on earth, they don't matter

          Any process to refine aluminum ore into aluminum metal that does not rely on carbon electrodes does matter. That's because (at least as far as we know now) there's no coal on the moon. This is still an impressive process, even if the likelihood of it being used on Earth is minimal.

          This process will also likely be useful on Mars if we were to colonize that planet. We'll need oxygen, aluminum, and more from what we can find there. Like the moon there doesn't seem to be a lot of coal on Mars. Even if ther

          • Nonsense, the moon has graphite and Mars has carbonate rocks.

            Why are you harping about no coal, it's irrelevant.

      • You are conflating "electrode" in general with the specific carbon electrodes used in smelting aluminium dissolved in molten cryolite. Other electrode chemistries are used in other applications, including attempts at "inert" electrodes. In the case of aluminium smelting - which is not the only possibility - one of the electrodes in question is made of molten aluminium. An equivalent process is plausible here, possibly forming a low-melting eutectic with the metal being extracted, which then gets re-cycled i

  • Just have the lunar colony members (Score:4, Funny)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @05:56PM (#59635728) Homepage
    get amazon prime memberships. One day shipping for any of their needs.

    • Just have the lunar colony members get amazon prime memberships. One day shipping for any of their needs.

      Given that Blue Origin is still purely suborbital after 20 years, maybe don't hold your breath. Or wait, that'd solve everything! All the lunar colony members just have to hold their breath and wait for Bezos' Blue Origin to deliver.

  • Does this mean the moon is flamable?

  • If I can work out how to generate money from simulated investing, I'll be rich!

  • Producing oxygen and using byproducts as building blocks of the Artemis station was actually key in Andy Weir's book by the same name. This isn't that far of a stretch, but to see his book become closer to reality, I have to be impressed. Though I doubt they will call the station Artemis now after NASA's next mission has that name. I could be wrong though.

  • There are no worries when this doesn't apply to the real world. [/sarcasm]

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