Tag: Moon

Are we perhaps one step closer to being able to live on the Moon? A new device developed by scientists in Cambridge, UK, can extract oxygen from Moon rock. This technology would be extremely important for creating a lunar bases for long term habitation, or using the Moon as a jump-off point to explore the deeper reaches of space.

The new device, a reactor developed by Derek Fray and his colleagues, was created from a modified electrochemical process the team invented in 2000 to get metals and alloys from metal oxides. The process uses the oxides — also found in Moon rocks — as a cathode, together with an anode made of carbon. To get the current flowing through the system, the electrodes sit in an electrolyte solution of molten calcium chloride (CaCl2), a common salt with a melting point of almost 800 °C.

The current strips the metal oxide pellets of oxygen atoms, which are ionized and dissolve in the molten salt. The negatively charged oxygen ions move through the molten salt to the anode where they give up their extra electrons and react with the carbon to produce carbon dioxide — a process that erodes the anode. Meanwhile, pure metal is formed over at the cathode.

To make the system produce oxygen and not carbon dioxide, Fray had to make an unreactive anode. “Without those anodes, it doesn’t work,” said Fray. He discovered that calcium titanate, which is a poor electrical conductor on its own, became a much better conductor when he added some calcium ruthenate to it. This mixture produced an anode that barely erodes at all — after running the reactor for 150 hours, Fray calculated that the anode would wear away by roughly three centimeters a year.

To heat the reactor on the Moon would need just a small amount of power, Fray said, and the reactor itself can be thermally insulated to lock heat in. The three reactors would need about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or even a small nuclear reactor placed on the Moon.

In their tests, Fray and his team used a simulated lunar rock called JSC-1, developed by NASA. Fray anticipates that three reactors, each a meter high, would be enough to generate a ton of oxygen per year on the Moon. Three tons of rock are needed to produce a ton of oxygen, and in tests the team saw almost 100% recovery of oxygen, he says. Fray presented the results last week at the Congress of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in Glasgow, UK.

Source: Nature

A new company is looking to sell advertising on the Moon. No, not with giant billboards, but by a new technology called Shadow Shaping that can creates images with robots that carve small ridges in the lunar dust over large areas that capture shadows and shape them to form logos, domains names or memorials.

“Never in the history of advertising has the possibility of penetrating every market on Earth, reaching every person on the planet, and touching them at emotional level only possible with the beauty of the moon on a starlit night, been made available,” says the website for Moon Publicity. “Twelve billion eyeballs looking at your logo in the sky for several days every month for the next several thousand years.”

Bid now for this exclusive ad space, starting at $46,000 (USD).

[/caption]
Isn’t this going a bit far, proposing to change the face of the Moon? The Moon Publicity people say they are doing this for the benefit of mankind.

“Advancements in space robotics as a result of Shadow Shaping, will aid in the colonization of outer space, helping preserve mankind from the inherent dangers of placing all of our species’ eggs in one basket, planet Earth. Any number of catastrophic events could end human life on Earth: Pandemics, collisions with comets or asteroids, weapons of mass destruction, supercollider accidents, environmental changes, hypernova radiation or the expansion of the Sun.”

“If shadows form a logo during a quarter moon, it will be a small price to pay for saving mankind.”

The website goes on to say that creating images on the Moon provides a commercial incentive for turbo charging space travel technology. “Shadows are only the beginning. These advancements will eventually place robots on other worlds building space stations and planting crops.”

Hmmm.

Source: Space Coalition Blog

[/caption]
Using data obtained from the gamma ray spectrometer on the Kaguya spacecraft scientists have found signatures of uranium, an element not seen in previous moon-mapping efforts. In addition to uranium, the Kaguya GRS data also is showing clear signatures for thorium, potassium, oxygen, magnesium, silicon, calcium, titanium and iron.

“We’ve already gotten uranium results, which have never been reported before,” said Robert C. Reedy, senior scientists at the Planetary Science Institute. “We’re getting more new elements and refining and confirming results found on the old maps.”

Earlier gamma-ray spectrometer maps from the Apollo and Lunar Prospector missions show a few of the moon’s chemical elements. But the maps constructed by Reedy and the Kaguya GRS team — using data gathered by state-of-the-art high-energy-resolution germanium detectors — are extending the earlier results and improving our understanding of the moon’s surface composition.

Reedy and his colleagues are using measurements from the Kaguya lunar orbiter’s GRS to construct high-quality maps of as many chemical elements as possible. Kaguya was launched in September 2007 and crashed into the moon at the end of its mission on June 10 of this year.

Source: Planetary Science Institute