China Successfully Extracts Water from the Lunar Surface!

[Cet article a initialement été publié le 25 août 2024]

While the United States and China are a frantic race to send humans to the Moonand even create a spatial base with homes during the next decade, we learn that Chinese scientists have managed to create “large quantities of water” from lunar soil. It is a considerable advance in the event that humans are staying for several weeks or even months on the moon.

According to CCTV, state television, the material used would come from the samples collected in 2020 by the Chinese mission Chang'e-5. It was the first time since 1976 that lunar samples had been reported on Earth, and at the time, it was the USSR which had brought only a few grams.

A ton of ground lunar = more than 50 liters of water

Reuters reports that researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered that minerals in this “lunar soil” contain large quantities of hydrogen, which reacts with other elements when heated to very high temperature, thus producing water vapor. “After three years of in -depth research and repeated checks, a whole new method of using the lunar soil to produce large quantities of water has been discovered, which should provide an important design base for the construction of future lunar scientific research stations and space stations”, explain CCTV.

Thanks to this new method, a ton of lunar soil will be able to produce between 51 and 76 liters of water. Which, still according to the public television, would be equivalent to daily consumption of drinking water of 50 people. Recall that for its part, NASA has published a water points card on the moon.

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The H2 moleculeO present in samples

At the beginning of the month, inside samples, Chinese scientists had discovered a ” Prismatic transparent crystal in the shape of a plate ». The width of a human hair, it is an “unknown lunar mineral” nicknamed ULM-1, according to the study published on July 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

ULM-1 crystals are made up of around 41 % water, with pieces of ammonia that keep these stable H2O molecules despite temperature changes. According to the authors of the study, it is the first time that water in its molecular form, H2O, has been found in physical samples. More importantly, it was recovered from a place where it was thought that water in this form could not exist.