NASA Explores the Moon's Water/Oxygen Deposits

destinyland writes "NASA's LCross mission will now test whether the moon's hydrogen and oxygen deposits could be converted into air, water, and even fuel. A dramatic crash by the rocket's upper stage will blast 200 tons of moon rock up 10 kilometers from a dark crater — where its constitution can be measured by LCross's instruments. (NASA predicts 'a number of different ways that we'll be able to create water from whatever form of lunar hydrogen we find' on the moon, noting recent missions have already confirmed the presence of oxygen in moon rocks, while the sun delivers a constant stream of hydrogen.) Carrying water to the moon costs $100,000 a kilogram, so these experiments could be a crucial step to getting more people on the moon."

Comments

blog

[buchner.johannes]

The mission has a blog (with feed) where they reported an anomaly two days ago.

Get well soon

[QuantumG]

LCROSS had some issues last weekend which caused it to lose a good portion of its fuel. The mission is down to the wire and may not make it. If it does, it will be because of the skill and dedication of the NASA team.

The data they collect from the impact, from LRO, earth and space telescopes and LCROSS itself, will provide the missing piece of the puzzle for Lunar ISRU. Up until now, the promise of ice on the Moon has been a distant "yeah, we'll do that one day" proposition, but with this data NASA will finally be able to do study on what kinda of equipment will be required to process the ice and produce potable water, oxygen and rocket fuel (most likely methane) and that will drive the design of Lunar exploration systems.

Re:Get well soon

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] what kinda of equipment will be required to process the ice and produce potable water, oxygen and rocket fuel [...]

One interesting thing mentioned in the article is that they can already produce oxygen from lunar minerals. The sun is sending a nice stream of hydrogen via the solar winds. This can be combined to produce potable water without having to process any ice whatsoever.

The question is whether it would "better" to melt the ice and filter it into something drinkable or to make the water from hydrogen and oxygen.

Re:Get well soon

[Rei]

The thing is, so far, we haven't found ice. Or any relevant quantities of hydrogen in any form. The concept of harvesting hydrogen from the solar wind seems silly; the solar wind at 1AU averages about 4 atoms per cubic centimeter. At an average 350km/s speed, this means a collector could gather no more than 0.7 milligrams per square meter per year. At 100% efficiency with no celestial shielding of the solar wind of any kind and with a heliostat. And not all of that would be hydrogen.

Re:Get well soon

[DerekLyons]

One interesting thing mentioned in the article is that they can already produce oxygen from lunar minerals. The sun is sending a nice stream of hydrogen via the solar winds. This can be combined to produce potable water without having to process any ice whatsoever.

Keep in mind that the "steady stream of hydrogen" amounts to a few pounds a year scattered across the entire lunar surface. Worse yet, AIUI, it doesn't stay on the surface long - it out gasses.

Re:Water on the moon + Earth drought =

[psycho12345]

Or we could spend far less and build a ton of desalination plants... Plenty of water on this planet (just not quite usable).

Re:Sigh

[QuantumG]

It costs so much because its a government program. The design decisions that made the shuttle, and are now pushing the design of Constellation, were not about technology, they were about which congressional district the components would be manufactured in, how many government employees would be laid off, etc. Under those constraints I'm surprised NASA ever gets anything to fly.

Re:Importing water to the moon

[melf-san]

I am not sure about fuels (nuclear fuels), but the rest looks promising.

Uranium has been found on moon: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090629-uranium-moon.html