Chinese scientists devise method to get water from the moon’s surface

The technique, developed following a study of samples brought back by the Chang’e-5 mission, could be a key step to building a lunar base

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Researchers have spent decades searching for water sources on the moon. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:14pm, 22 Aug 2024

Chinese scientists say they have come up with a method to extract water from the moon’s soil – a potentially vital step towards building a lunar research base.

The technique depends on extracting hydrogen and oxygen from the soil at extremely high temperatures, and was described on Thursday as “highly practical” by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The search for water has long been one of the top priorities for lunar exploration missions, but previous efforts had focused on the search for natural water reserves.

But researchers from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, the CAS Institute of Physics and other institutions came up with the new method after studying lunar rocks brought back to Earth by China’s Chang’e-5 probe in 2020.

The team found that some of the minerals in lunar soil – especially the oxide mineral ilmenite – store large amounts of hydrogen as a result of billions of years of exposure to the solar wind.

When heated, the hydrogen chemically reacts with iron oxides in the minerals to produce large amounts of water, as well as iron and ceramic glass.