When astronauts return to the moon in the next decade, it will do more than dust off their footprints.
A British company has won a contract with the European Space Agency to develop technology to turn lunar dust and rocks into oxygen, leaving behind aluminum, iron and other metal powders for lunar construction workers.
If the process could be done to work well, it would pave the way for extraction facilities on the moon that make oxygen oxygen and valuable materials on the surface, rather than having them go into space at a heavier cost.
Managing Ian Mellor said, “Anything you take from Earth to the Moon is an extra weight that you don’t want to carry, so it saves you a lot of time, effort and money if you can make this stuff in place.” Was. Director of Metallurgy, located in Sheffield.
Analysis of rocks brought back from the moon reveals that oxygen by weight makes up about 45% of the oxygen content. The rest is mostly iron, aluminum and silicon. In a work published this year, scientists at the University of Glasgow and Metallurgy discovered that they could extract oxygen from simulated lunar soils, leaving behind useful metal alloy powders.
NASA and other space agencies are making advanced preparations to return to the moon, this time to establish a permanent lunar base or “lunar village” where nations will work with private companies on important technologies such as life support, housing construction, energy generation. Production of food and ingredients.
The ISA agreement will fund metallurgy for nine months to complete the electrochemical process that frees the moon from dust and rocks by sending an electric current through the material. The process is already used on Earth, but is released as an unwanted byproduct of oxygen mineral extraction. In order for it to work for lunar explorers, oxygen must be captured and stored.
Under the agreement, the firm will try to increase the yield and purity of oxygen and metals from the rock, while reducing the amount of energy released in the process. If technology seems promising, the next step is to demonstrate oxygen extraction on the moon.
Inhaled air can be produced by combining oxygen released from the lunar surface with other gases, but it is also an important component of rocket propellant that can be produced on the moon and used to refuel spacecraft bound for deeper space.
“If you want to move further into space, it’s an essential gas station on the moon, to enter the deepest space,” Mellor said.
Mark Sims, who works on the process at the University of Glasgow, said the lunar rock represents “a tremendous potential source of oxygen oxygen” to support human exploration of the Earth’s satellite and vast solar system.
“Oxygen is useful not only for astronauts to breathe, but also as an oxidizer in rocket propulsion systems.” “There is no oxygen-free oxygen on the moon, so astronauts have to carry all their oxygen with them to support life and to be able to return to life, and so there is a significant increase in weight and therefore the cost of rocket launches. For the moon. “
Sue Horn, head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency, said: “In the future, if we want to travel to space on a large scale and base ourselves on the moon and Mars, we need to create or find the things we need. To support life: food, water and breathing air. “
For more than four decades, human space exploration has been limited to a mission to the International Space Station, a rotation outpost around 220 miles from Earth. In the coming years there will be the construction of a new station in orbit around the centered 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 proceed. Mars.
The Lunar Gateway program has set an ambitious goal for humans to return to the moon in early 2024, when crews were transported to NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The rocket is expected to make its first un-crew flight next year.
Essa has provided power and propulsion units for the first Orion flight and has agreed to build a main crew module for the lunar station.
