A recent test conducted by researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) successfully produced oxygen using simulated lunar soil in a vacuum. The test involved melting lunar dust in a special reactor that could reach very high temperatures. The team found that as the simulated Moon soil warms, it releases carbon monoxide, which can then release oxygen.

The ability to produce oxygen directly on the Moon will be critical to support the space agency’s plans for a long-term lunar outpost under the Artemis program. As part of these lunar plans, NASA intends to collect and use local resources, called On-Site Resource Utilization (ISRU), to sustain missions on the lunar surface indefinitely.

JSC Senior Engineer Aaron Paz praised the achievement in a recent NASA statement. “This technology has the potential to generate several times its own weight in oxygen on the surface of the moon each year, enabling long-term human existence and lunar economy,” Paz said. Said.

The test was conducted by NASA’s Carbothermal Reduction Display (CaRD) team using JSC’s Dirty Thermal Vacuum Chamber to simulate lunar conditions — “dirty” because lunar dust gets everywhere. A 15-foot-wide (4.6-meter) spherical vacuum chamber used a powerful laser to simulate concentrated sunlight to melt simulated regolith, or pulverized moon dust, in a process known as carbothermic reduction.

This has been done before, but not in a vacuum. With a new carbothermal reactor developed by Sierra Space for NASA, the researchers were able to maintain a constant pressure inside the reactor to prevent outgassing while allowing spent regolith material to flow in and out of the reaction zone during a vacuum chamber test. Using the Mass Spectrometer to Observe Lunar Processes (MSolo) during the smelting process, the CaRD team was able to detect carbon monoxide released from the laser-treated regolith.