The Moon is a pretty peculiar space object. Not only that it gives us the creeps sometimes when it shows on the night sky in its full phase, or it can regulate the Earth’s wobble on its own axis, the space object also lacks an atmosphere.
Despite lacking an atmosphere, our natural satellite still has some oxygen on its surface. The regolith from the Moon is believed to be made up of about 45% oxygen.
The ESA wants to extract oxygen from the Moon
According to InterestingEngineering.com, the European Space Agency (ESA) will be collaborating with a team from the UK for its ambition to extract oxygen from the Moon’s surface. The team will be in charge of building the payload to make the magic happen.
David Binns, who is Systems Engineer from ESA’s state-of-the-art Concurrent Design Facility, explained as InterestingEngineering.com quotes:
The payload needs to be compact, low power, and able to fly on a range of potential lunar landers, including ESA’s own European Large Logistics Lander, EL3,
Being able to extract oxygen from moonrock, along with useable metals, will be a game-changer for lunar exploration, allowing the international explorers set to return to the Moon to ‘live off the land’ without being dependent on long and expensive terrestrial supply lines.
Perhaps the only inconvenience is that we’ll have a lot more to wait until we see the lunar extraction device into action. If everything is fine, Europe will deploy it in the 2030s.
Until the 2030s, it’s expected that NASA will send humans to the Moon once again during its upcoming Artemis mission. It will mark the return of astronauts to the Moon after about half a century. The last time it happened was in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission.