British firm Metalysis is being backed by the European Space Agency to develop technology that turns moon dust and rocks into oxygen.
The ability to extract oxygen on the moon is vital for future exploration and habitation, being essential for sustainable long duration activities in space.
Generating products with local materials, a practice called in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU), rather than carrying everything astronauts need into space, would significantly reduce the cost as well as the payload mass that would be launched from earth.
Metalysis said its process has recently been proven for the industrial-scale production of metals and alloys, leading to the present investigation into the potential application of this process to regolith-like materials in a lunar context.
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