A new study that borders on unbelievable suggests that just the Moon’s surface can supply oxygen required for Earth’s entire population for 100,000 years. Moon’s surface is oxygen-rich with its regolith made up of approximately 45% of the gas essential for life.
On average, one cubic meter of the Moon’s regolith carries 1.4 tonne minerals including 630 kgs of oxygen.
Around one cubic meter of lunar regolith contains 1.4 tonnes of minerals on average. It includes about 630 kg oxygen.
Humans require around 800 grams of oxygen per day. This means than 630 kg is enough for one person’s breathing requirement for 2 years.
This means that just a 10-meter deep layer of the Moon’s regolith has adequate oxygen to meet the needs of all the roughly 8 billion (800 crore) people on Earth for a period of 100,000 years
The thin lunar atmosphere does not have enough oxygen and is only made up of primarily of hydrogen, neon and argon gases. However, the Moon’s bedrock has enough oxygen trapped among rock and fine dust on the surface. This is not in gaseous form.
Recently, NASA and the Australian Space Agency signed a deal to send a rover under the Artemis program to collect samples of lunar rocks to study ways to extract breathable oxygen for humans. Artemis Program is NASA’s mission to land a human back on the Moon. Agencies are spending time and investing in finding ways to extract the abundant resources in space for human use.
