{"id":7544,"date":"2023-07-20T06:55:20","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T06:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/power2innovate.com\/we-could-get-large-amounts-of-water-from-the-moon-by-directing-the-sun-at-it\/"},"modified":"2023-07-20T06:55:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T06:55:20","slug":"we-could-get-large-amounts-of-water-from-the-moon-by-directing-the-sun-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/power2innovate.com\/we-could-get-large-amounts-of-water-from-the-moon-by-directing-the-sun-at-it\/","title":{"rendered":"We could get large amounts of water from the moon by directing the sun at it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\n \n Artist\u2019s concept of a Lunar Thermal Mining Mission. Credit: Matt Olson \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One of the most commonly discussed challenges when starting our species’ space exploration journey is how to get the resources necessary for life off of the Earth. Typically this is thought of as two things\u2014water and oxygen, but, luckily, oxygen can be supplied by splitting apart a water molecule, so the most critical resource we could find in space is water.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\n
Commonly called a “volatile” in the language of space resources, water has been the focal point of many plans for in-situ resource utilization on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere. Some of those plans have been well thought out, others not. One particular showed some promise when it was selected as part of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funding back in 2019, and here we’ll take a closer look at it.\n<\/p>\n
The concept, published in a report titled “Thermal Mining of Ices on Cold Solar System Bodies” but hereafter referred to as “thermal mining,” is the brainchild of George Sowers, a space resource expert and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). The underlying concept is surprisingly simple and familiar to anyone who played with a magnifying glass as a child.\n<\/p>\n
If you direct sunlight at a particular spot using a giant mirror or other technology, that spot will heat up. If you heat an area that contains ice, and it is in a vacuum, that ice will sublimate into water vapor and begin to release from the surface being heated. That water vapor can then be captured using a cold trap or similar mechanism, and the water can then be harvested for use in exploration activities, such as drinking, breathing, or even fueling rockets.\n<\/p>\n
So the basic system architecture of the thermal mining idea is simple and comprises three main components. First is a large mirror (known as a heliostat) to direct sunlight to a particular area on another world. The second is a giant tent that captures the sublimated water, and the third is a cold trap\/transport system that will capture the water as it escapes from the surface.\n<\/p>\n
None of this is a giant technological leap\u2014we don’t need to develop fancy technologies to manufacture those three components. However, they’ve never been put to this use before, so it’s worth some time derisking them. That’s precisely what Dr. Sowers and his team did as part of their NIAC report.\n<\/p>\n
First, they looked at potential places where the system might be useful. Four otherworldly bodies came out on top\u2014Mars, where the presence of water ice has been repeatedly proven; Ceres, where there are jets of water vapor being ejected from its surface; and two main belt asteroids\u201424 Themis and 65 Cybele, both of whom are thought to be covered in ice due to their reflectivity. All are in the inner solar system, making them relatively easy targets for exploration and resource exploitation missions using this technique.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n \n \n <\/p>\n