According to a researcher, the upper layer of the Moon alone could provide enough oxygen to sustain eight billion people for 100,000 years, but still would need- he can extract it. Researchers are working on it.
Several agencies aim to establish themselves permanently on the Moon:the United States and its partners on the one hand, China and Russia on the other. Initially, all will be able to transport equipment and resources from Earth, but in the longer term, the costs inherent in the freight of goods will be far too high. This is why techniques are designed and developed to try to rely on local resources, including oxygen.
Oxygen could be used to produce breathable air , but not only. It could also be used to develop fuel . Nevertheless, a question then arises:where to find oxygen on the Moon?
At first glance, we might think of the atmosphere. The Moon indeed offers one. However, it is now very thin and mainly composed of hydrogen, neon and argon. In other words, you have to look elsewhere, in the ground, and more precisely inside the regolith, for the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the lunar surface.
This regolith is mainly composed of silica, aluminum, iron and magnesium oxides to which are attached oxygen molecules (about 45%). In order to break these bonds, we must then use electrolysis .
On Earth, this process is commonly used in particular to produce aluminum. The process involves passing an electric current through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly called alumina) through electrodes to separate the aluminum from the oxygen. For the Moon, imagine the reverse:oxygen would be the main product, while the chosen mineral would be a by-product.
On paper, this process is quite simple, but there is a catch:it is very energy and equipment intensive , which does not prevent some companies from working on the problem.
Earlier this year, the Belgian startup Space Applications Services announced the construction of three experimental reactors aimed at improving this process of producing oxygen by electrolysis. One of these reactors could be sent to the Moon by 2025 as part of the mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Assuming that we can one day efficiently extract oxygen from regolith, how much could the Moon provide? John Grant of Southern Cross University had fun doing a little math.
"If we ignore the oxygen trapped in the Moon's deeper hard rock and just consider the regolith that is easily accessible on the surface, we can do a few estimates “, explains the researcher in The Conversation.
It recalls that each cubic meter of lunar regolith contains an average of 1.4 tons of minerals, including about 630 kilograms of oxygen. He also points out that humans need 800g of oxygen per day to survive. “So 630 kg of oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years (or a bit more) “, notes Professor Grant.
Then suppose that the average depth of the lunar regolith is about ten meters and that we can extract all the oxygen from it, the researcher believes that this material could provide enough oxygen to meet the needs of eight billion people for about 100,000 years . Just that.
