Life on the Moon might not be a science fiction dream. And it is that in the natural satellite it could provide enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100 thousand years, according to John Grant Professor of Soil Sciences, Southern Cross University in an article. This it would be possible to a project that aims to produce oxygen through electrolysis.
It was in October that the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed an agreement to send an Australian-made rover to the Moon under the Artemis program, with the goal of collecting lunar rocks that could provide breathable oxygen on the Moon. It is regolith, which is composed of approximately 45% oxygen
“Actually there is a lot of oxygen in the monto. It just isn’t in a fizzy form. Instead, it’s trapped within regolith, the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the Moon’s surface. If we could extract oxygen from the regolithWould it be enough to support human life on the Moon? ”, Says the scientist.
Oxygen can be found in many of the minerals in the soil around us. And the Moon is made mostly of the same rocks as the Earth like:
- Silica
- The aluminum
- Iron oxides
- Magnesium
All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form that our lungs can access.
How would oxygen be obtained on the Moon?
Electrolysis is a process that separates the elements of a compound by means of electricity and If it can be replicated on the Moon, the upper ten meters of the lunar surface could generate an incredible amount of oxygen, capable of supplying future colonies of thousands of humans.
On Earth, this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminum. An electrical current passes through a liquid form of aluminum oxide through electrodes, to separate the aluminum from oxygen. In this case, oxygen is produced as a by-product. However, it takes a lot of energy to get it going, so to be sustainable, it would have to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.
Earlier this year, Belgium-based startup Space Applications Services announced that it was building three experimental reactors to improve the oxygen manufacturing process through electrolysis. They hope to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the resource utilization mission of the European Space Agency.
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