The Moon Has Enough Oxygen Buried Beneath Its Surface to Sustain Billions of People – Futurism

It turns out theres plenty of oxygen on the Moon after all but theres a catch.

The Moons near-vacuum atmosphere doesnt have anywhere near enough oxygen to sustain human life. But as Southern Cross University soil researcher John Grant wrote this week inThe Conversation, its top layer of rocky soil, known as regolith, likely contains enough oxygen for 8 billion people to survive for about 100,000 years.

The only problem, of course, is that you cant breathe rocks.

Thats where a new joint program between the Australian Space Agency and NASA comes in. Inked in October, the deal will send an Aussie rover to the Moon via NASAs Artemis program to collect lunar rocks and, as NASA put it in a press release, attempt to extract oxygen from lunar regolith.The results have the potential to be civilization-shifting because if lunar settlers can synthesize breathable air in situ, a long-term Moon base would become vastly more feasible.

The technology for the extraction, known as electrolysis no, not the laser hair removal already exists and is a pretty straightforward process, Grant said.

On Earth this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminium, he wrote. An electrical current is passed through a liquid form of aluminium oxide (commonly called alumina) via electrodes, to separate the aluminium from the oxygen.

Oxygen makes up about 45 percent of lunar soil, Grant noted, but to extract it from the other elements that make up the regoliths composition, such as silicon, aluminum, and magnesium, scientists will have to usea lot of energy and industrial equipment to break them apart.

To be sustainable, the Southern Cross University soil scientist supposed, it would need to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.

While the logistics of extracting oxygen on the lunar surface represents a mighty challenge, Grant noted that Space Applications Services, a Belgian startup, has announced plans to construct three reactors and send them to the Moon to create oxygen via electrolysis.

And it could happensoon, if all goes according to plan. The company has said that it plans to send its experimental reactors to the Moon by 2025 in tandem with the European Space Agencys in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) program.

While its awesome to imagine a vibrant human presence on the Moon,dont forget that the hoi polloi will almost certainly not be invited.

Read more: The Moons top layer alone has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years [The Conversation]

More on Moon mining: China Analyzing Moon Rocks as Potential Fusion Power Source

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The Moon Has Enough Oxygen Buried Beneath Its Surface to Sustain Billions of People - Futurism