“European researchers are working on a system that can churn out breathable oxygen from simulated samples of moon dust,” reports Gizmodo:

“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel,” explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release. Lomax, along with ESA research fellow Alexandre Meurisse, are currently plugging away at a prototype that could eventually lead to exactly that: oxygen production from lunar dust. They’re currently testing their system at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), which is based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Their prototype is working, but adjustments will be required to make it suitable for use on the Moon, such as reducing its operating temperature….

Interestingly, ESTEC is not treating the metals as an unwanted byproduct. The team is currently looking into various ways of exploiting these metals in a lunar environment, such as transforming them into compounds for 3D printing.

The European Space Agency points out that samples returned from the lunar surface were made up of 40-45% percent oxygen by weight.

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Source:: Slashdot