Demented Hamsters
05-06-2006, 17:19
For some reason, I just find this really cool (but I am a spacenut).
It looks like they really are taking Moon colonisation seriously. How cool is that?
Oxygen from Regolith
With NASA's plan to return to the Moon by 2020, research has commenced on the issues facing lunar colonisation. One concern is the supply of breathable air; accordingly discovering a way to extract oxygen from lunar materials is a high priority. Oxygen is also required for rocket fuel.
In order to uncover various different ways of achieving this goal NASA has launched a challenge called MoonROx. US$250,000 will be awarded to the first team to successfully extract a specified amount of breathable oxygen from replicated lunar soil within an eight hour period. Deadline for the challenge is June 1, 2008.
During the Apollo moon landings, samples of the Moon's rock and dust were returned to Earth for evaluation. The dust that covers the Moon's surface is called regolith, a material rich in oxides. The most common component is silicon dioxide (SiO2) which is very much like beach sand; other oxides include iron (FeO), calcium (CaO), and magnesium (MgO). In fact 43% of the regolith is oxygen.
The abundance of regolith on the Moon is an advantage for oxygen production however it poses another concern identified by the Apollo teams; the dust gets into everything. For this reason, the secondary goal of the project is to turn the dust into a useful building material for roads and buildings. The process of extracting the oxygen and making the building material must not end up consuming other resources in short supply. For example, using electrolysis for the process would require a large quantity of electricity to be generated, causing new problems.
As lunar regolith is far too expensive to use in the experiments, a simulated version is used. Minnesota Lunar Simulant or MLS-1a is made from billion year old basalt found on the north shore of Lake Superior and mixed with glass particles.
A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre has tested a way of vaporising the regolith to extract oxygen. The scientific trial uses a lens to focus free light from the Sun into a tiny vacuum chamber containing 10grams of MLS-1a. At 2500ยบ C almost 20% of the MLS-1a was converted to oxygen and the slag became a highly metallic glassy material.
At NASA's Langley Research Centre, work has commenced to shape the slag into useful products like radiation shielding, bricks, spare parts and pavement.
From a email I got tonight from an astronomy site I subscribe to.
It looks like they really are taking Moon colonisation seriously. How cool is that?
Oxygen from Regolith
With NASA's plan to return to the Moon by 2020, research has commenced on the issues facing lunar colonisation. One concern is the supply of breathable air; accordingly discovering a way to extract oxygen from lunar materials is a high priority. Oxygen is also required for rocket fuel.
In order to uncover various different ways of achieving this goal NASA has launched a challenge called MoonROx. US$250,000 will be awarded to the first team to successfully extract a specified amount of breathable oxygen from replicated lunar soil within an eight hour period. Deadline for the challenge is June 1, 2008.
During the Apollo moon landings, samples of the Moon's rock and dust were returned to Earth for evaluation. The dust that covers the Moon's surface is called regolith, a material rich in oxides. The most common component is silicon dioxide (SiO2) which is very much like beach sand; other oxides include iron (FeO), calcium (CaO), and magnesium (MgO). In fact 43% of the regolith is oxygen.
The abundance of regolith on the Moon is an advantage for oxygen production however it poses another concern identified by the Apollo teams; the dust gets into everything. For this reason, the secondary goal of the project is to turn the dust into a useful building material for roads and buildings. The process of extracting the oxygen and making the building material must not end up consuming other resources in short supply. For example, using electrolysis for the process would require a large quantity of electricity to be generated, causing new problems.
As lunar regolith is far too expensive to use in the experiments, a simulated version is used. Minnesota Lunar Simulant or MLS-1a is made from billion year old basalt found on the north shore of Lake Superior and mixed with glass particles.
A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre has tested a way of vaporising the regolith to extract oxygen. The scientific trial uses a lens to focus free light from the Sun into a tiny vacuum chamber containing 10grams of MLS-1a. At 2500ยบ C almost 20% of the MLS-1a was converted to oxygen and the slag became a highly metallic glassy material.
At NASA's Langley Research Centre, work has commenced to shape the slag into useful products like radiation shielding, bricks, spare parts and pavement.
From a email I got tonight from an astronomy site I subscribe to.