Discovery that goes down in history: The surface of the Moon has enough oxygen for 8 billion people to live for 100,000 years

Along with the advancements in space exploration, humanity has recently spent a lot of time and money investing in technologies that can enable the efficient use of space resources. 

At the forefront of these efforts is the discovery that could go down in human history when Earthlings can harness oxygen on the Moon - Worth mentioning, that oxygen doesn't come from this satellite's atmosphere, it does come. from. the ground!

Oxygen on the Moon

In October 2021, the Australian Space Agency and the US Space Agency (NASA) signed an agreement to launch an Australian-made rover to the Moon under the US Artemis Program, with the goal of Collect Moon rocks to find out which rocks can provide (extract) oxygen to breathe on the Moon.

Although the Moon has an atmosphere, it is very thin and is composed mainly of hydrogen, neon, and argon. It is not the kind of gas mixture that can sustain oxygen-dependent mammals like humans.

In fact, there is a lot of oxygen on the Moon. It's just not gaseous. Instead, it is trapped inside the regolith - the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the Moon's surface.

If we could extract oxygen from regolith , would it be enough to support human life on the Moon?

Oxygen can be found in many minerals in the ground around us. And the Moon is mostly made up of rocks like you'll find on Earth (albeit with a slightly larger amount of meteorite matter).

Minerals such as silica, aluminum, iron oxide, and magnesium dominate the Moon's landscape. All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form our lungs can access.

Regolith is the result of strong impacts from meteorites that have crashed into the surface of the Moon over countless millennia. (Photo: NASA/JPL).

On the Moon, these minerals exist in a number of different forms including hard rock, dust, gravel, and surface rock. This material is the result of strong impacts from meteorites that have crashed into the surface of the Moon over countless millennia.

Some people call the Moon's surface layer "earth," but some scientists are hesitant to use the term. Soil as we know it is a pretty magical thing that only happens on Earth. It has been created by a variety of organisms working on the "mother of earth" material - regolith , which is derived from hard rock - for millions of years.

The result is a matrix of minerals that were not present in the original rock. Earth's soil has remarkable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Meanwhile, the material on the Moon's surface is essentially protozoan in its original, pristine form.

How to split oxygen on the Moon?

The Moon's Regolith is made up of about 45% oxygen. But that oxygen is tightly bound to the aforementioned minerals. To break those strong bonds, we need to work.

You may be familiar with this if you know about electrolysis: 

On Earth, this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as the production of aluminum. An electric current is passed through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly known as alumin) through the electrodes, to separate the aluminum from the oxygen. In this case, oxygen is produced as a byproduct. 

There are many alumina (aluminum oxide) refineries in Australia, including this one pictured in Gladstone, Queensland. Aluminum is produced in two stages. Before pure aluminum can be produced using electrolysis (in the Hall-Heroult process), alumina refineries must first refine naturally occurring bauxite ores to extract alumina (from which pure aluminum can be extracted). substance is later recovered). (Photo: Dave Hunt / AAP).

On the Moon, oxygen would be the primary product, and the aluminum (or other metal) extracted would be a potentially useful byproduct.

It's a pretty simple process, but there's a catch: It's very energy-hungry . To be sustainable, it needs to be powered by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.

The extraction of oxygen from the regolith would also require considerable industrial equipment. We need to first convert the solid metal oxide into a liquid form, either by applying heat, or by combining heat with a solvent or an electrolyte.

An illustration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology on the Moon. (Source: ESA – K. Oldenburg).

We have the technology to do this on Earth, but moving this apparatus to the Moon - and generating enough energy to run it - will be a huge challenge.

In early 2021, Belgium-based Space Application Services startup announced that it was building three experimental reactors to improve oxygen generation through electrolysis. They plan to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) In-situ Resource Use (ISRU) mission.

Exploration.esa.int information, ESA is currently preparing a mission to the surface of the Moon to demonstrate the technologies needed to enable the use of in-situ resources (ISRU) on the Moon. The goal of this ISRU mission is that by 2025, the production of water or oxygen on the Moon is possible.

Various processes and techniques have been developed to extract chemically bound oxygen from the lunar regolith. Other products of these processes are metals and final alloys that can still be used to produce something else.

How much oxygen does the moon have?

If Earth's oxygen extraction technology is carried to the Moon successfully, it will be a revolution in human space exploration, because then, the Moon can really bring breathing gas to humans.

If so, how much oxygen does the Moon have?

If we ignore the oxygen bound in the deeper hard rock material of the Moon - and consider only the regolith extract that is easily accessible on the surface - we can make some estimates.

Each cubic meter of the Moon contains an average of 1.4 tons of minerals, including about 630 kg of oxygen. NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen per day to survive . So 630 kg of oxygen will keep a person alive for about 2 years (or more).

Now, if the average depth of regolith on the Moon is about 10 meters and we can extract all the oxygen from there. That means the top 10 meters of the Moon's surface will provide enough oxygen to support all 8 billion people on Earth for the next 100,000 years or so.

This number is awesome!

This also depends on how efficiently we manage to extract and use oxygen on the Moon.