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When astronauts return to the moon in the next decade, they will do more with the dust than leave footprints in it.
A British company has won a contract with the European Space Agency to develop the technology to turn moon dust and rocks into oxygen, leaving behind aluminum, iron and other metal powders to build moon workers with.
If the process can be made to work well enough, it will pave the way for mining facilities on the moon that produce oxygen and precious materials on the surface, rather than having to transport them into space at enormous cost.
“Everything you carry from the Earth to the Moon is an additional weight that you don’t want to carry, so if you can make these materials in situ it will save you a lot of time, effort and money,” said Ian Mellor, the lead director of Metalysis. , which is based in Sheffield.
Analyzes of the rocks reported by the moon reveal that oxygen makes up about 45% of the material by weight. The rest is largely iron, aluminum and silicon. In a work published this year, scientists from Metalysis and the University of Glasgow found they could extract 96% of the oxygen from the simulated lunar soil, leaving useful metal alloy powders behind.
NASA and other space agencies are in advanced preparation to return to the moon, this time to establish a permanent lunar base, or “moon village,” where nations will work alongside private companies on critical technologies such as life support, habitat construction, generation. of energy and production of food and materials.
The ESA contract will finance Metalysis for nine months to perfect an electrochemical process that releases oxygen from lunar dust and rocks by sending an electric current through the material. The process is already used on Earth, but oxygen is released as an unwanted byproduct of mineral extraction. In order for it to work for the lunar explorers, oxygen must be captured and stored.
Under the contract, the company will seek to increase the yield and purity of oxygen and metals from the rock by reducing the amount of energy consumed by the process. If the technology looks promising, the next step will be to demonstrate oxygen extraction on the moon.
Oxygen released from the lunar surface can be combined with other gases to produce breathable air, but it is also a vital component of rocket propellant that could be produced on the moon and used to refuel spacecraft bound for deep space.
“If you want to go further into space, it’s essentially a gas station on the moon, to get into deeper space,” Mellor said.
Mark Symes, who works on the trial at the University of Glasgow, said the moon rock represents “a huge potential source of oxygen” to support human exploration of Earth’s satellite and the wider solar system.
“Oxygen is useful not only for breathing in astronauts, but also as an oxidant in rocket propulsion systems,” he said. “There is no free oxygen on the moon, so astronauts would have to take all of their oxygen with them to the moon, for life support and to enable their return journey, and this greatly increases the weight and therefore the expense of launches. rockets tied to the moon. “
Sue Horne, Head of Space Exploration at the British Space Agency, said: “In the future, if we want to travel extensively in space and create bases on the Moon and Mars, then we will have to do or find the things required. To sustain life. : food, water and breathable air. “
For more than four decades, human space exploration has been limited to missions to the International Space Station, an orbiting outpost about 220 miles above the Earth. The focus over the next few years will be the construction of a new station in orbit around the moon that will serve as a stopping point for humans to establish a presence on the lunar surface, and potentially as a base from which to depart outward to Mars.
The Lunar Gateway program has set itself the ambitious goal of returning humans to the moon as early as 2024, with crews being transported aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The rocket is expected to make its first unmanned flight next year.
ESA supplied power and propulsion units for the first Orion flight and entered into contracts for the construction of the main crew module for the lunar station.
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