The United States wants to melt the moon rock and win the space race

A giant space race is underway. Not only the United States but also private companies are vying for space conquest against Russia or China. It’s about the moon, it’s about Mars, and who knows if the James Webb telescope will find anything else that can compete again. America has a new asset in this space rally: the option to melt the moon rock.

Lunar Resources

In an interview Arstechnica Elliott Carroll, chief executive of Lunar Resources, says: “The United States needs things like this to be at the forefront of space.” Lunar Resources is the company that developed the lunar rock melting device. The plan behind this is to extract precious metals from the moon. Or, in Caroline’s words, “there are all kinds of precious metals on the moon, waiting to be acquired.”

All we are doing now is looking at what the moon can bring us. This is because NASA wants to launch several lunar missions (so-called Artemis missions) where it would be useful to use some resources from the moon. For example, it is being explored whether shallow pits can be used as sources for launching rockets. However, Lunar Resources thinks it can get a lot out of Regolith. Regolite is a gray, loose rock found on the moon.

Utilization of lunar resources

It has developed a device that allows you to extract all kinds of resources such as aluminum, magnesium, silicon and iron from that regolith. This allows you to create new things while you are on the moon. NASA believes it. This gave the company $ 3 million to develop their invention.

The rock is intended to heat up to about 1,600 degrees and then melt it. This molten mass is then electrolyzed to form oxygen and metals. Lunar soils contain 40 percent oxygen, 20 percent silicon and 10 percent aluminum. The 1 meter large device can process 100 kilograms of regolith in 24 hours.

America exists forever

But what exactly do you do on the moon? NASA hopes to use it to build solar cells, transmission cables, energy storage and more capabilities so humans can spend some time on the moon. And Lunar Resources believes it can do as much as possible, says Carroll: “The United States needs to extract resources to create a permanent presence on the moon.” In short: that moon must be ‘occupied’ by the United States, because imagine that another innovative country is coming soon

The device is currently undergoing extensive testing, but it is difficult to do better. We can not follow the dusty place where the moon is here. In addition, the moon has a very different atmosphere. The Lunar Resources device is scheduled to go to the moon in 2024. We will then learn whether it is real and metaphorical.