Lunar samples from Chang’e-5 confirm fuel and oxygen can be mined from surface
Chinese scientists studying the lunar samples returned by Chang’e-5 probe have confirmed earlier studies of Apollo lunar samples that it is possible to extract oxygen and fuel from the Moon’s soil.
After analyzing the Chang’e-5 lunar soil, the team found the sample contains iron-rich and titanium-rich substances, which could work as a catalyst to make oxygen using sunlight and carbon dioxide.
The team proposed a strategy using lunar soil to electrolyze water from the moon and the astronauts’ life support system into oxygen and hydrogen. The process is powered by sunlight. The carbon dioxide exhaled by moon inhabitants can be collected and combined with hydrogen to yield the fuel methane, also catalyzed by lunar soil, according to the study. With this method, no external energy apart from sunlight would be used to produce oxygen and fuel to support life on a moon base, said the researchers.
What is new about these results are the proposed techniques and components used to make the process practical. The science team is now proposing testing it on future Chinese Moon missions
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Chinese scientists studying the lunar samples returned by Chang’e-5 probe have confirmed earlier studies of Apollo lunar samples that it is possible to extract oxygen and fuel from the Moon’s soil.
After analyzing the Chang’e-5 lunar soil, the team found the sample contains iron-rich and titanium-rich substances, which could work as a catalyst to make oxygen using sunlight and carbon dioxide.
The team proposed a strategy using lunar soil to electrolyze water from the moon and the astronauts’ life support system into oxygen and hydrogen. The process is powered by sunlight. The carbon dioxide exhaled by moon inhabitants can be collected and combined with hydrogen to yield the fuel methane, also catalyzed by lunar soil, according to the study. With this method, no external energy apart from sunlight would be used to produce oxygen and fuel to support life on a moon base, said the researchers.
What is new about these results are the proposed techniques and components used to make the process practical. The science team is now proposing testing it on future Chinese Moon missions
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The only issue though is, in the long term, you still have to import the supply of carbon from Earth or find a source of it on the Moon. If you are using your supply of CO2 to make methane, then you don’t have any CO2 for plants to grow, and so you can’t grow food there. You would be in a cycle of diminishing returns as you burn off your supply of fuel/CO2. So it would have to be replenished from an outside source. The issue could be solved just by importing the food supply from Earth, or strait up shooting blocks of carbon at the Moon with a mass driver. That’d be fun.
But really, the most logical thing to do would be to use hydrogen for fuel and leave your carbon cycle closed, by digging up and using ice on the Moon, if it’s easy and abundant enough to procure.