UK company Metalysis has been awarded a European Space Agency (ESA) contract to develop technology that turns lunar rock into oxygen and building materials, which could enable astronauts to set up a base on the moon.
The process, which involves reducing the metal oxides found on the moon's surface to produce pure oxygen, metals and alloys, could provide astronauts with a way to generate oxygen and materials that can be used for construction directly from the moon.
The project, titled The Metalysis FFC Process for Extra-Terrestrial Oxygen Production from ISRU, is being funded by the ESA and forms part of its Space Resources Strategy.
Left image shows a pile of lunar regolith. Right image shows the same pile after almost all oxygen has been extracted. Image from ESA Metalysis' FFC process is an electrolytic technology that is able to extract the oxygen from metal oxides, resulting in pure metal and alloy powders.
The FFC process is based on a technology that was first developed at the UK's University of Cambridge by Derek Fray, Tom Farthing and George Chen in 1996 and 1997, and takes its name from the inventors' initials.
The FFC process has long been proven to work for the industrial-scale production of metals and recent studies have demonstrated its potential application on lunar regolith ? the layer of loose solid material that covers the moon.
Analyses of rocks brought back from the moon have shown that lunar regolith comprises 40 to 45 per cent oxygen by weight, which is...