European Space Agency chooses team to make oxygen on the moon
The ability to extract oxygen and other useable materials from lunar regolith will be a game-changer for lunar exploration.
An artist impression of Lunar Lander collecting a sample on the moon. (Image credit: ESA) The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the winning industrial team that will design and build an experimental payload to extract oxygen from the regolith (lunar soil) on the surface of the Moon.The team is led by UK-based Thales Alenia Space and is tasked with producing a small solar-powered prototype device that will be used to evaluate the prospect of building oxygen-generation plants on the moon.
This could be useful for generating oxygen that can be used as a propellant and for astronauts to breathe.
The demonstrator will have to land, undergo commissioning, acquire sample material, load it into the demonstrator which then produces oxygen from it. Pictured here is the process. (Image credit: ESA)
The compact payload designed by the team will have to extract between 50 and 100 grams of oxygen from the lunar regolith while targeting the extraction of 70 per cent of all available oxygen within the sample. The device will also have to do all this within a period of ten days, which is how long solar power will be available within a single lunar day before the pitch-black and freezing lunar night.
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