Team Chosen To Extract Oxygen From the Surface of the Moon (digitaltrends.com) 15
"The European Space Agency has announced it has chosen a team to make oxygen on the moon," reports Digital Trends.
"The team, led by aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, will design and build a payload to create oxygen from lunar soil." [C]arrying oxygen into space using rockets is inefficient, so it would be better if astronauts could find ways to make what they need in the places they are exploring. This principle is called in-situ resource utilization and is a key idea for future missions to the moon and Mars.
The payload for the moon will be designed to create between 50 and 100 grams of oxygen from the dusty material which covers the moon, called regolith. The aim is to extract 70% of the available oxygen in the sample within a 10 day period. That time limit is because it will need to operate within the window of available solar power in a lunar day, which is around two weeks long.
Previous experiments and concepts have shown that it is possible to extract oxygen from lunar regolith, which is made up of around 40 — 45% oxygen by weight. Now, the challenge is to make a workable system within the constraints of size and materials.
A systems engineer from the space agency's design facility has high hopes for the project, according to a statement released Wednesday. "Being able to extract oxygen from moonrock, along with useable metals, will be a game-changer for lunar exploration, allowing the international explorers set to return to the Moon to 'live off the land' without being dependent on long and expensive terrestrial supply lines."
"The team, led by aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, will design and build a payload to create oxygen from lunar soil." [C]arrying oxygen into space using rockets is inefficient, so it would be better if astronauts could find ways to make what they need in the places they are exploring. This principle is called in-situ resource utilization and is a key idea for future missions to the moon and Mars.
The payload for the moon will be designed to create between 50 and 100 grams of oxygen from the dusty material which covers the moon, called regolith. The aim is to extract 70% of the available oxygen in the sample within a 10 day period. That time limit is because it will need to operate within the window of available solar power in a lunar day, which is around two weeks long.
Previous experiments and concepts have shown that it is possible to extract oxygen from lunar regolith, which is made up of around 40 — 45% oxygen by weight. Now, the challenge is to make a workable system within the constraints of size and materials.
A systems engineer from the space agency's design facility has high hopes for the project, according to a statement released Wednesday. "Being able to extract oxygen from moonrock, along with useable metals, will be a game-changer for lunar exploration, allowing the international explorers set to return to the Moon to 'live off the land' without being dependent on long and expensive terrestrial supply lines."
Lunar regolith is 40% oxygen (Score:3)
Lunar regolith is 40% oxygen, so there is plenty there.
The next most common elements in lunar regolith are silicon, aluminum, calcium, and iron. Perhaps these metals can be co-produced with oxygen.
Re: Lunar regolith is 40% oxygen (Score:2)
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...and once we figure out a practical transporter and warp drive, we'll be all set to go.
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If you have hydrogen and energy, you can get iron and oxygen from limenite FeTiO3 or volcanic glass (heat and expose to hydrogen gas) Fe + H2O. You can then convert H2O back to hydrogen and oxygen using electricity and reuse the hydrogen.
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Hydrogen will be the bottleneck. There is very little on the moon. Even if it is recycled, H2 leaks easily so some will be lost.
Carbon is another problem. There is very little available.
Nitrogen is almost non-existent on the moon.
Why not just ask the Nazis... (Score:2)
strip mining next (Score:1)
I wonder how long until the moon becomes an eye-sore, as seen from earth?
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I wonder how long until the moon becomes an eye-sore, as seen from earth?
Soon someone will put LED arrays on the moon and display ads.
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Eh, how would strip mining make moon an eyesore, exactly? It's made of rock, cratered rock, and covered with dust from rock. Strip mining would leave more of same in its wake.
But there is even more amusing way to look at this:
A cubic meter of moon rock has 2.5 tons of mass, and 40 percent of that is 1.0 tons of oxygen, very convenient. So one billion metric tons of oxygen per cubic kilometer of moon rock. A human needs 300 kg of oxygen per year, so a million humans need 300 million kg of oxygen per year,
How do you make money from rocks? (Score:2)
To find the money rock, go around your island hitting all the rocks with a shovel. Once you strike the money rock, there will be a limited amount of time to continue hitting it before it stops spitting out money. After time is up or eight items come out of the rock, it'll stop spitting out items.