Imagine the moon as a hub of manufacturing, construction and even human life. It's no longer a far-fetched idea baked in science fiction lore — increased interest and investment in space exploration are pushing efforts to develop the technologies needed to make the moon a viable home for humans.
Developing lunar infrastructure requires building materials, and shuttling these over from Earth would be costly and inefficient. This has fuelled research into the in-situ processing and use of raw materials naturally found on the moon's surface. However, one major challenge with this approach will be the immense amount of power the lunar resource processing will need.
A research team from the University of Waterloo's Laboratory for Emerging Energy Research (LEER) is looking into processing lunar regolith, the moon's top layer of soil and dust, into usable materials for life support, energy generation and construction. This includes investigating the use of defunct satellite material as a fuel source when mixed with lunar regolith. READ FULL ARTICLE