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Study set to extract oxygen from Moon rock regolith

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Efforts to colonise the Moon could be given a significant boost with molten salt and electrolysis technology that extracts oxygen from Moon rock.

moon rock
Indicative Lunar lander with In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) payload (Image: Redwire Space Europe)

To this end, Thales Alenia Space has signed a €1m study contract with the European Space Agency for a payload concept to do just that.

For a sustainable habitation on the Moon, humans will need to utilise resources that they find on the Moon rather than transport these resources from Earth; one of these resources is oxygen.

Thales Alenia Space teams in the UK have worked with AVS, Metalysis, Open University and Redwire Space Europe to specify a demonstration payload for a European Space Agency Lunar Mission that uses molten salt and electrolysis to extract oxygen from Moon rock regolith.

Related news

Metalysis awarded ESA contract for lunar resource harvesting

According to the ESA, samples returned from the lunar surface confirm that lunar regolith is made up of 40–45 per cent percent oxygen by weight and is its single most abundant element. This oxygen, however, is bound up chemically as oxides in the form of minerals or glass.

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