Chinese researchers have developed a ground breaking method to extract lunar water and dust and turn them into fuel, offering an opportunity to revolutionize future Moon missions.
The team has proposed the effectiveness of a “photothermal strategy” that converts the light into heat. By harnessing this proposed strategy, the scientists have devised a system that could convert carbon dioxide from extracted water into carbon monoxide, oxygen and hydrogen.
This major breakthrough proves to be a “potential route for sustaining human life on the Moon and enabling long-term extra-terrestrial exploration.”
The researchers write in a paper published in the journal Joule, “The sustainable utilization of local resources is essential for long-term human survival and beyond,” indicating that bringing water from Earth is prohibitively expensive at roughly $83,000 per gallon.
Professor Lu Wang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen described this discovery as “magic” that lunar soils possessed for futuristic missions.
Wang said: “The biggest surprise for us was the tangible success of this integrated approach. The one-step integration of lunar H2O extraction and photothermal CO2 catalysis could enhance energy utilization efficiency and decrease the cost and complexity of infrastructure development.”
The team tested their photothermal strategy on actual Moon samples gathered during China’s Chang’E-5 mission, which launched in November 2020.
Unlike the lab-based experiments, the actual lunar surface will likely prove a more challenging place to extract water and convert into fuel.