The European Space Agency has selected a team of five European companies to design and build the first experimental payload to extract oxygen from regolith on the lunar surface. In turn, the American company Venturi Astrolab presented a universal lunar rover. It can transport both cargo containers and astronauts.
In connection with plans for large-scale exploration of the Moon, NASA has been asking private companies for several years to develop certain mission components, ranging from cargo ships and landing modules to lunar rovers, implying that the developments will be used by both the agency and the companies. Venturi Astrolab has developed the FLEX rover for future lunar missions, which can be useful for various purposes.
To ensure long-term stay of astronauts on the Moon and supply of lunar bases, technologies for extracting resources or creating building materials from raw materials available on the surface of the Earth’s natural satellite are needed. In particular, one of the most important resources will be oxygen, which is needed for people to breathe and as a component of rocket fuel needed to refuel ships and lander modules.
A prototype of an installation for producing oxygen from regolith was created in the Laboratory of Materials and Electrical Components of the European Center ESTEC. It uses a direct deoxidation method through the FFC process, which involves the electrolysis of metal oxide powder in molten salts at high temperature, allowing the regolith sample to be converted into a mixture of metal alloys, extracting almost all the oxygen. Estimates of the oxygen content of actual lunar regolith are around 40–45 percent of the total mass.
Regolith is a residual soil that is a product of space weathering of rock in situ, an unconsolidated product of crushing and redeposition of lunar rocks, covering the surface of the Moon with a continuous cover. Regolith consists of fragments of lunar rocks and minerals ranging in size from dust particles to several meters in diameter, glasses, lithified breccias, fragments of meteorites, etc. Lunar regolith, according to domestic scientists from Sechenov University and the South Russian State Polytechnic University named after M. I. Platov, poses a danger to the human body on most of the Moon.
“The basis of lunar soil is regolith, which contains, among other things, the chemical elements chromium, beryllium, nickel, cobalt, which, in the case of prolonged contact, can have a negative impact on the well-being and health of lunar colonists, affecting their respiratory, cardiovascular and digestive systems systems,” said Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Occupational Medicine, Aviation, Space and Diving Medicine of Sechenov University Ivan Ivanov.
He added that this soil composition can cause irritation of the skin and respiratory tract, damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. These data must be taken into account when colonizing the Moon, along with other extreme factors, the specialist noted.