Inventors are hoping to figure out how to create a reliable clean water supply on the moon – and it could involve a microwave oven from Tesco.
The goal of establishing a manned lunar base was launched many moons ago, but has yet to come to fruition. With reliance on Earth’s water supplies risky and expensive, one of the many challenges is how to extract and purify water from ice lying in craters at the moon’s south pole.
Such a supply would not only provide a resource for drinking and growing crops, but the water could also be split into hydrogen, for use as rocket fuel, and oxygen for residents to breathe.
Now the UK Space Agency has announced it is awarding £30,000 in seed funding, with expert support, to each of 10 UK teams competing to solve the problem.
Lolan Naicker of Naicker Scientific Ltd, one of the UK finalists of the Aqualunar Challenge, said that throwing the mystery out to the public allows people with very different approaches to problem solving, and very different backgrounds, to suggest potential answers. set.
“It’s extremely difficult to actually come up with a viable solution,” he said.
Naicker added that the first part of his team’s plan is to microwave the dirty moon ice. “I’m literally going to go out today, buy a microwave from Tesco across the road, and strip it down, take out the magnetron and then try to incorporate it into the first part of my process,” he said.
Naicker and his team members are working on a “SonoChem system” that will use powerful sound waves to generate millions of tiny bubbles in lunar water, within which high temperatures and pressures are produced. This, Naicker said, produces highly reactive substances known as free radicals that break down contaminants in the water.
But while the team has a core idea, there is much more to do.
“Remember, we have to get from this dirty ice to liquid water first. And we have to do it in an environment that is -200C – that’s vacuum conditions,” he said.
The teams have just seven months to develop their ideas before a winner and two runners-up are chosen in spring 2025, with the selected trio to share a further £300,000 to work on their solutions. In addition, approximately £600,000 is dedicated to rewarding solutions from Canadian-led teams.
Meganne Christian, a British Space Agency reserve astronaut and chair of the Aqualunar Challenge judging panel, said it was early days for Nasa’s Artemis missionsupported by the European Space Agency and others, which aims to put humans back on the moon.
“So this is the right moment to have innovators look at how to purify water on the moon – and to be honest, we didn’t really know there was water on the moon until relatively recently,” she said.
Christian added that the Aqualunar Challenge – which is funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Bilateral Fund and managed by Challenge Works in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency – has a wide range of finalists, with teams also considering how the technologies can be applied to Earth.
Naicker said his team has a number of plans. “We can build a slightly larger system, put it in the back of a van and drive it out to a war-torn area,” he said. “We can develop smaller devices for the developing world where access to clean water is really challenging.”
Christian added that the idea is that the new technology can also be used on other space missions where there is water ice.
“We know there is water ice on Mars, for example. So absolutely, these technologies can be adapted for use on Mars and other planetary bodies, wherever we decide to go in the future,” she said.
The nine other British finalists in the Aqualunar Challenge include:
Nascent Semiconductor Ltd, which is developing a compact system called the Titania-Diamond Annular Reactor (TiDAR). It will break down contaminants in lunar soil using a titanium dioxide catalyst activated by LED-based UV light with diamond electrodes.
The British Interplanetary Society in London, who came up with Ganymede’s Chalice – a device in which a curved mirror focuses the Sun’s rays onto an airtight crucible containing moon ice. The components within the ice can then be cooked and stored in turn.
Queen Mary University of Londonwhose team is creating AquaLunarPure: a reactor that heats lunar ice to leave behind solid material, then heats it to more than 373C at 220 bar pressure to turn it into “supercritical water”, removing contaminants through oxidation.
Minima Design Ltd, Suffolkwho developed a Cyclic Volatile Extractor (CVE) – in which dirty ice is heated inside a new closed chamber under variable pressure, so that different contaminants can be removed and stored.
RedSpace Ltd, who came up with Frank, a Filtered Regolith Aqua Neutralization Kit, in which lunar soil is heated to remove volatile gases before the remaining material is passed through a membrane to separate solid particles and liquid. The latter is then distilled to obtain water.
Perspective Space-Tech Ltd, who created an innovative lunar water resource system called I-LUNASYS, in which lunar samples are heated to remove impurities as gas. Reverse osmosis is then used to separate water molecules from the sample, with the final step involving a UV filtration system.
Shaun Fletcher and Dr Lukman Yusuf from the University of Glasgow, which plans to melt dirty ice, remove large soil particles and then pump the water through an ultrasound system. This will remove gases, destroy pollution and bind any moon dust together, before filtering the water to remove remaining contaminants.
Regolithix Ltd, which is developing a Regolith Ice Plasma Purifier for Lunar Exploration (RIPPLE), in which dirty lunar ice will be heated, with water vapor and solid particles separated by a device similar to a salad spinner. The vapor can then be separated with a plasma torch, and the hydrogen and oxygen isolated with a molecular sieve.
Interstellar mapping, who came up with a Static Water Extraction System (SWES) to sublimate various volatile substances in the lunar soil at lower temperatures than ice and water are extracted and stored. The sample is then heated again to change the water to steam which is withdrawn and cooled.
