It’s common knowledge that the Moon is a cratered ball of rock. Stunning as it is in the night sky or in photographs taken from orbit the landscape is barren, grey, dusty and dark. Are there other things to be found than meets the eye? I’m Alana Bartolini from ESA Education and joining me today is Moon scientist Alexandre Meurisse. Thanks for being here with me. Hello. Tell me, do we expect to find any other useful materials
on the Moon than dust and rocks? So yes, an important resource at the Moon
will be the sunlight first, as we expect solar panels to power all our
activities during our lunar exploration. The only issue is of course that the cycle
of day and night is very different at lunar surface than what
we are used to on Earth. If you are around the equator at the Moon you will have about two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of complete darkness. But if you go towards the poles you will have sunlight all the year and next to it you will have permanently shadowed regions, permanently shadowed craters. Where are craters which have never seen light
in billions of years, so this are very cold craters. And actually the temperature is quite cold and can go down to minus 200 degrees [Celsius]. And we think that water may have been trapped there, because as comets travel in space some pieces may have fallen into these craters
over time and the water which fell would have accumulated
in these craters. And we are not sure yet about the form of
this water, but from the satellite images we are pretty
sure it is there. We have good evidence for it. If we could use this water, it would be an important resource. As the rest of the Moon is completely dry, there is no atmosphere, there is no water, it is a complete vacuum actually. This vacuum can be challenging to deal with, but it can also be beneficial for some instrumentation. So it can be seen as a resource and as another resource you could also see the difference of temperature, because during the day it is about 200 degrees [Celsius] at the surface but during the night it is minus 150 degrees
[Celsius]. So these changes in temperature you can also use to create electricity but actually the real resource that still remains is the dust and the rock. But it is more than the dust and the rock itself, the resource is hidden inside as these rocks
are made of oxygen, are made of metals. Inside there are minerals, because the soil is very similar to what you
could find in a volcanic region on Earth. And that is actually the real resource of the Moon. OK. So, how do we actually make use of these materials? So, this dust and these rocks have oxygen
and metals strongly bound together and minerals. And the idea is that we develop processes, so it could be chemical processes, it could be gas processes which enables a high temperature to extract
the oxygen from the metal. Then we have oxygen that we can use for breathing, that we can use for refuelling a rocket for instance. And we have metals that we can use for manufacturing, for making tools and try to make construction
elements. As of course we need a landing pad, we need roads and for that we need to turn this dust into solid material. So we also have the processes for that. These processes, for example additive manufacturing would be very useful for shielding material, because you have a constant radiation environment
in space. You have radiation from the Sun, you have radiation from space, so at the lunar surface you need to be shielded, otherwise a long exposure to this radiation would be very harmful for the bodies of the
astronauts. So all the habitat would have to be covered
by a thick layer of lunar soil and that of course would have to be configurated and there are also processes for that. And so, can these resources help us go beyond
the Moon? For example if we want to go further into space? Yes, so once we have for instance oxygen extracted from the soil or if we can also make use of the water that
we find in the craters then we can in principle refuel rockets in
the vicinity of the Moon. That could help them to go further into space or bring more payload as the gravity of the Moon is one sixth of
Earth’s gravity. So we could take advantage of this relatively low gravity to go further into space but actually the real value would be the knowledge we acquire at the surface as we are going to learn how to live of the land, how to be independent from terrestrial shipments. Because for the Moon it is fine, we are only about one week away from the Earth but if we want to go beyond into space we can’t rely on Earth shipments. Every now and then we’ll have to be completely independent and that’s what we want to learn on the Moon. How to live off the land, how to really sustain exploration without
counting on Earth. And is this the type of research that you
are currently working on? Yes, so my work consists of developing all
this processes to extract oxygen from lunar soil or for construction to turn this dust into some construction material. But actually I am working on identifying the
knowledge gaps and trying to fill them so we can take all these processes out of the lab and make use of them in space for sustainable
lunar exploration. And can you tell me how did you get involved
in lunar research? Up to my Master, I had a background in Material Sciences. I had no connection to space. I did my studies in France and Russia and then I got an internship at the European
Space Agency and that’s how I set foot in the lunar research
environment. I followed with the PhD at the German Aerospace
Centre and that’s how I developed my expertise
in processes for using lunar soil. And that’s how I ended up in the European
Space Agency as a research fellow today. That sounds like a very exciting job. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you. If you would like to learn more about Moon
research, stay tuned for our next episode about how
we use these lunar resources in 3D printing.
