Search for oxygen on the Moon

With plans to bring people back to the Moon, NASA is increasingly interested in finding oxygen on it. And this week, the Hubble space telescope may have provided some important answers .

Aristarchus's mouth was taken by Hubble

Because of its small mass and low gravity, the Moon cannot maintain an atmosphere, even when the atmosphere is very thin. However, oxygen does not necessarily exist in the form of gas above the ground, but may be safe in certain rocks. Collecting stones and handling them with chemicals or heat will release a multitude of oxygen so that humans can breathe and make rocket fuel.

The Moon is the Earth's only natural satellite. The average distance from the Moon to Earth is 384,403 km. The moon's diameter is 3,476km.

The moon orbits the Earth on an orbit almost like a circular orbit. It takes about a month to spin around in orbit.

Between 1969 and 1972, the US Apollo program brought 12 people to the Moon, the first one was Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in Apollo 11. Before that, the Moon was the target of many landings and reconnaissance. Dangerous around the spacecraft, starting with the Soviet Luna 1 ship in 1959.

The most abundant oxygen in the Moon is ilmenite, a titanium oxide brought back to Earth from the Taurus-Littrow area on the Moon in 1972. To determine ilmenite reserves at the site and searching for other opencast mines, NASA recently decided to use the Hubble telescope to examine four regions of the Moon: Taurus-Littrow, Hadley-Apennine (Apollo 15 landing site), Aristarchus crater Unexplored, due to collisions with meteorites, and the nearby Schroter valley.

Working quickly, Hubble discovered that it was not only ilmenite mines at the landing point of Apollo 17 but also in the Schroter valley. Especially there are many of these minerals in Aristarchus mouth. Aristarchus will be a great landing point for future geologists because meteorite collisions blow up surface materials, enabling scientists to study matter deep down. All of these characteristics have made Aristarchus an important place to build a future base on the Moon.

Although providing extremely clear images, Hubble's giant eye could not see objects smaller than about 6 meters in diameter on the Moon. Somewhere in Taurus-Littrow and Hadley-Apennine are some of Apollo's truck-sized parts. They were left behind when the crew left the Moon. No one has seen these metal objects for more than 30 years since the last time people walked on the Moon. If NASA's plan is to be carried out, perhaps they will soon see the relics.

Minh Son ( According to Science, Future & Science )