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Machine to melt Moon rocks and derive metals may launch in 2024

Machine to melt Moon rocks and derive metals may launch in 2024

Machine to melt Moon rocks and derive metals may launch in 2024
Jan 21, 2022 1 min, 0 secs

However, a Houston-based company says there is value in the gray, dusty regolith spread across the entire lunar surface.

"There are all of these valuable metals on the Moon, just there for the taking," said Elliot Carol, chief executive officer of Lunar Resources.

It is called Molten Regolith Electrolysis, by which lunar regolith is heated to a temperature of 1,600 degrees Centigrade, melted, and then electrolyzed to produce oxygen and metals, such as iron and silicon.

Longterm, the company's plan is to produce metals and use them to manufacture power systems on the Moon, Carol said.

Lunar Resources is negotiating with NASA for a ride to the Moon on one of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services missions, Carol said.

"The challenge with demonstrating industrial technologies is that they're heavier than science payloads," Carol said.

In reality, proving out a technology like Molten Regolith Electrolysis in a laboratory is a very far cry from doing so in a vacuum on the harsh, dusty lunar surface, which has extreme fluctuations in temperatures.

And this is precisely the kind of experimental work that NASA's lunar payloads program should be supporting if the space agency is ever to find a pathway to sustainable deep space exploration.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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