As NASA seeks to send astronauts to the moon with Artemis missions, one of the agency’s primary goals is to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. Resources such as oxygen are the most important building blocks to make this vision a reality. In addition to using oxygen for breathing, it can also be used as a propellant for transportation, helping Moon visitors stay longer and travel farther.

In a recent test, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston successfully extracted oxygen from simulated lunar soil. Lunar soil is the fine-grained material that covers the Moon’s surface. This mining was first done in a vacuum environment and paved the way for astronauts to one day mine and exploit resources in the lunar environment, called onsite sourcing.

NASA’s Carbothermal Reduction Demonstration (CaRD) team conducted tests in conditions similar to those found on the Moon, using a special 15-foot-diameter spherical chamber called the Dirty Thermal Vacuum Chamber. The chamber is considered “dirty” because impure samples can be examined in it.

The team used a high-power laser to simulate heat from a solar concentrator and melted a simulated lunar soil in a carbothermal reactor designed for NASA by Sierra Space Corp., Broomfield, Colo. A carbothermic reactor is a place where the heating and release of oxygen takes place. Carbothermal reduction has been used for decades on Earth to make things like solar cells and steel by producing carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide using high temperatures.

After warming the ground, the team were able to detect carbon monoxide using an instrument called the Lunar Operations Observation Mass Spectrometer (MSolo). A similar vehicle will fly to the Moon’s South Pole on two future exploration missions – the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 in 2023, which will help scientists search for water, and NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) in November 2024. ). will explore Monts Mouton, a large flat-topped mountain, to get a close-up view of the location and density of water ice and other potential sources.

“This technology has the potential to generate several times its own weight of oxygen on the lunar surface each year, enabling a long-term human existence and a lunar economy,” said Aaron Paz, NASA Senior Engineer and CaRD project manager at Johnson.

To apply this process to oxygen production on the Moon, a carbothermal reactor must be able to maintain pressure to prevent gases from escaping into space and allow material on the Moon to enter and exit the reaction zone. Operating the reactor in a vacuum environment for the CaRD test brought simulated conditions on the lunar surface and the reactor’s technical readiness level to six, meaning the technology has a fully functional prototype or representative model and is ready for space trials.

“Our team has proven that the CaRD reactor can survive on the lunar surface and successfully extract oxygen,” said Anastasia Ford, NASA engineer and CaRD test leader at Johnson. “This is a huge step forward in developing an architecture for building sustainable human bases on other planets.”

The Game-Changing Development (GCD) program within the Science and Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) sponsored tests to develop the technology needed to extract oxygen from the lunar soil, which has been identified as a critical technology gap.

CaRD is part of STMD’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII). Through LSII, NASA develops the core capabilities required for humans and systems to successfully live and function in a variety of environments on the surface of the Moon and other planets.

The same technology that the CaRD test has validated could be applied to Artemis missions and one day trips to the depths of our solar system. Following the successful completion of this demonstration test, NASA determined that oxygen could be extracted from existing Moon material to provide humans with a critical resource for survival and transportation on extraterrestrial worlds. With its Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first black human on the Moon’s surface, paving the way for a long-term existence on the Moon and acting as a springboard for astronauts to Mars.