Scientists have tried to find ways to make the Moon a habitat for humans that has the sustainable resources needed for life to thrive.
The Chinese scientists are going one step further in this mammoth task and are now trying to develop a mechanism that can produce water on the moon from lunar soil.
In the search for life on the moon, water was the most important ingredient because it is necessary for survival.
Now that scientists have found some traces of water, they have tried to produce water that could sustain life on the natural satellite.
Professor WANG Junqiang from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) led the team of scientists that developed a method to produce water from lunar soil.
How do scientists turn lunar soil into drinking water?
The strategy for large-scale water extraction on the lunar surface was developed by researchers who used a unique chemical reaction between endogenous hydrogen and lunar regolith. This reaction is intended to help in the production of drinking water.
“We used samples of lunar regolith brought back by the Chang’E-5 mission for our study to find a way to produce water on the moon,” said Professor WANG, stressing the importance of using authentic lunar material to ensure the reliability of their experiment.
The experiments showed that heating lunar regolith to over 1,200 K using specially designed concave mirrors produced one gram of molten lunar regolith, which can produce about 51 to 76 mg of water.
According to this, more than 50 kg of water can be extracted from one ton of lunar regolith, which corresponds to one hundred 500 ml bottles of drinking water.
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These many water bottles can provide 50 people with drinking water for a whole day, which shows how this can sustain human life on earth.
The researcher also found that lunar ilmenite (FeTiO3) is an important mineral for water extraction.
The mineral, which occurs in large quantities in the Moon’s regolith, was observed to have the highest amount of hydrogen carried by the solar wind.
The scientists who produce water from lunar soil can also electrochemically break it down into hydrogen and oxygen, thus providing the lunar inhabitants with both breathable air and renewable energy sources.
(With contributions from agencies)
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