Researchers from Nanjing University in China are hoping to design a system that takes advantage of lunar soil and solar radiation, the two most abundant resources on the Moon.
After analysing the lunar soil brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft, their team found the sample contains compounds including iron-rich and titanium-rich substances that could work as a catalyst to make desired products such as oxygen using sunlight and carbon dioxide.
With China and Russia announcing a collaboration to build a research station on the surface of the Moon last year, the discovery could help to provide vital resources by harvesting local resources instead of relying on expensive cargo drops from rocket launches.
The team proposed an “extra-terrestrial photosynthesis” strategy which uses lunar soil to electrolyse water extracted from the Moon and from astronauts’ breathing exhausts into oxygen and hydrogen powered by sunlight.
The carbon dioxide exhaled by...