No air on the Moon? No problem.
A multinational project aiming to extract oxygen from lunar soil received £410,000 (~$294,000) from UKSA last week.
The goal is not only to help astronauts breathe, but also to create rocket fuel. Should the tech prove out, future Artemis Moon missions can ship less air and fuel for astronauts—leaving more room for equipment for sustainable lunar living.
Gassing up. The project is called OXYGEN and includes a coalition of partners led by Added Value Solutions (AVS)-UK and the University of Glasgow. There are two goals:
- To get oxygen production working using “lunar-like materials” (which helps practice for the real stuff);
- To collect and transfer the samples using advanced systems.
Luckily, there’s expertise in the project based on previous work from ESA, which has a prototype oxygen plant in the Netherlands. In 2020, for example, ESA, Glasgow, and UK company Metalysis extracted oxygen from simulated Moon dust using “molten salt electrolysis” (also our new band name).
Simply put, the researchers placed regolith—laced with calcium-chloride salt—into a metal basket, heated the whole thing to 950 degrees Celsius, and used an electrical current for extraction. And work continues on the project in 2025: OXYGEN partner Carleton University in Canada is developing a new molten-salt electrolysis reactor to strip the oxygen from lunar soil, the university stated.
Building to stay: The program is part of many technologies aiming to help Artemis astronauts stay on the lunar surface for weeks. Other entities are working with nuclear power, comms tech, and waste recycling to bring “reduce, reuse, recycle” ideas Moonside.
If the oxygen tech works as planned, there’s a side benefit: breaking down regolith may give access to valuable elements like silicon, titanium, aluminum, and iron. Glasgow researchers previously said these elements could be used for lunar construction, such as in powders for 3-D printing on site.
