European Space Agency develops equipment to harvest oxygen on the Moon

The European Space Agency plans to deploy a device capable of extracting 70% of the oxygen from the Moon's surface by 2030.

In a post on March 9, the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed that it had selected British company Thales Alenia Space to build a compact oxygen extraction device, after evaluating three designs. of different rival groups.

Simulation of the Moon lander carrying oxygen extraction equipment.

The new space vehicle will help the ESA assess whether larger models - such as factories that extract oxygen to breathe for astronauts and propellants for rockets - are feasible on the Moon. In fact, last April, the US Space Agency (NASA) achieved an impressive achievement by sucking oxygen from Mars with a device called MOXIE that flew to the red planet on the spacecraft. Perseverance detector.

Thales Alenia Space's design needed to be compact but capable of extracting 50-100 grams of oxygen from the Moon's topsoil, which could be achieved by harnessing about 70% of the total available oxygen in the collected sample. . According to a reference criterion, 5 grams of oxygen is enough for astronauts to breathe for 10 minutes.

In addition, the device will have to collect all the oxygen over a period of about 10 days. That's because it's powered by solar energy, which is limited when the lunar day (which lasts two weeks) turns into a dark and cold lunar night.

"The instrument needed to be compact, low-powered, and able to fly aboard a range of potential Moon landers, including ESA's large logistics lander EL3," said David Binns, ESA Systems Engineer. . "The ability to extract oxygen and usable metals from the topsoil will be a game-changer in the exploration of the Moon, allowing international explorers to return to this celestial body. without being dependent on costly supplies from the Earth".

If all goes to plan, we could see a full-size model sent to the Moon aboard ESA's logistics lander in the early 2030s, says lead researcher Giorgio Magistrati at ESA .