Scientists extracted the moon’s dust with water and oxygen using sunlight. Could it operate on the lunar surface?

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The soil excavated from the moon could be used to produce oxygen and methane production, which the lunar settlers could use for breathing and racket fuel.

This is the conclusion of a Chinese team that has found a one -step method of how to do it. However, whether it is economically viable is discussed.

But the Chinese team thinks it is. “The biggest surprise for us was a tangible success of this integrated approach,” said Lu Wang, a member of the team, who is a chemist from the University of China Hong Kong, a. a statement; “The integration of one -step moon water extraction and photographic carbon dioxide catalysis could increase energy consumption efficiency and reduce infrastructure development costs and complexity.”

They emphasize that research has shown that transportation of stocks from The land For any future The moon The base would be expensive because the higher the cargo mass, the harder it is that the rocket must operate to run into space. Studies have shown that only one gallon of water from the ground to the moon will cost $ 83,000, but it is expected that each astronaut will drink 4 gallons per day.

Fortunately, the moon’s water has a lot, though it is not automatically obvious. Brought to the moon CometIs it Asteroids and micrometeoroids and even Solar windThe water slides permanently shadow craters at the moon polesstuck in minerals such as ilmenite.

It is quite easy to extract the drink of water and there are many technologies that describe how it can be done, including the heating of the regolith, focusing on it. However, the Chinese team was able to take this step further.

“Here, the novel is the use of lunar soil as a catalyst for carbon dioxide molecules, and combine them with pulled water to make methane,” Philip Metzger, a physicist from Central Florida University, told Space.com. Metzer did not participate in new research, but he is the founder of NASA Kennedy Space Center. ”The swamp is running‘, the research laboratory to develop technology of construction, manufacturing and mining technology planets (and moon).

Methane would be more desirable than liquid hydrogen as a potential missile fuel, as it is easier to maintain stability, which requires less machines and lower costs to maintain the moon. Liquid methane mixed with oxygen as an oxidizer is a strong missile fuel. There are already many commercial companies such as Chinese land space Rockets powered by methane;

Water ilmenitis is also a useful catalyst for reacting to water with carbon dioxide to obtain oxygen and methane, while the Chinese team has developed a one -step process. First they heat the regolith to 392 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), concentrating the sun’s light to release the water inside. The carbon dioxide is then added to the mixture, the one that may be inspired by astronauts, causing ilmenitis to catalyze the reaction between extracted water and carbon dioxide. Researchers have tested this process known as a photographic catalysis in the laboratory using a simulator based on lunar regolithic samples that China has returned to the ground Chang 5 Mission (lunar samples are too much destroyed in such experiments, so the simulator is used instead).

Although previous technology was also able to do it, they needed more steps and more machines and used a catalyst that should be transported from the ground. The research team believes that their process is becoming more effective and cheaper than alternatives.

But Metzger is not fully convinced that it will work. On the one hand, the lunar regolith is a skilled thermal insulator, so heating the sample throughout the way would not be easy.

“The heat is effectively spreading deeper into the soil, which greatly reduces the amount of water that can be produced over time,” the Metzer said. One option could be “grab” the regolith, re -flipping it so that the heat is more evenly used, but it slows down the water extraction and increases the mechanical complexity of the process. In an environment where the moon dust enters each corner and skull, and where the temperature fluctuations between the night to day can be as high as 482 degrees by Fahrenheit (250 Celsius), the risk of degradation only increases when more moving parts fall into the equation.

“This may be possible, but to show that it is actually competitive, more of the technology is needed,” Metzer said.

There are also problems with the application of carbon dioxide, recognized by both the Chinese team and Metzger. Specifically, there is a question mark on whether astronauts can produce enough carbon dioxide during normal exhalation. Metzer estimates that astronauts could only provide a tenth of the carbon dioxide needed. As an alternative, carbon dioxide could be moved from the ground, but it would be better to win the proposed technique, which was to create a lot of costs of receiving water, oxygen and methane from resources, which are essentially available on the moon.

However, in the long run it may be useful to send some materials from the ground. Metzer emphasizes a similar experiment that used an exotic granulated catalyst-nikel-thinking kieselguhr (kieselguhr is a kind of sedimentary rock), not the lunar regolith. Metzger suspects that the material specifically designed as a catalyst, such as a nickel on Kieselguhr, would be more effective than the lunar regolith. In addition, while it would be expensive to transport from the ground, Nickel-Kieselguhr can be reused, so you will only need to transport once to the moon. In the event of an analysis of costs and benefits, it may eventually be more effective in doing so.

Nevertheless, the research team convincingly showed that the use of the lunar regolith as a catalyst for fuel and water work. The next step is to show that this technology can be reduced to more effectively maintain the lunar base than other methods, and that it can work in the lunar conditions when the severity is weaker, the temperature varies to large extremes and the space is intense radiation.

“I think these are very interesting results and can be additional programs to use the lunar soil as a photocratalizer,” Metzer said. “You will need more work to show whether this concept can be economically competitive. I’m skeptical, but all good ideas have your own destroyers and you can never know, until someone will do it to prove it.”

Related stories:

-Wandens mining on the moon can be easier than expected, Indian Chandrayaan-3 Lander found

– Astronauts could mix moon dust with old satellites to produce fuel

– Scientists find hydrogen in Apollo Moon Rocks, which shows that astronauts can remove lunar water

There is certainly no direct rush for technology. With NASA Artemis 3 The mission aimed at finally returning astronauts to the lunar surface in 2027. funding In the future, the Artemis IV and V “we have not yet created a permanent lunar base at some indefinite time.

But Artemis missions are a great opportunity to try some of these technologies and will be very important in showing whether we can really live on the moon or not.

The investigation was published on July 16. In the magazine Joll;