A NASA-funded research team at Georgia Tech that includes Regents' Professor Thomas Orlando and Senior Research Scientist Brant Jones has developed a method for extracting water from the Moon to generate the hydrogen and oxygen needed for propulsion fuels for solar system exploration. They describe their experimental work in Thermal extraction of H2O(s) from lunar regolith simulant with concentrated solar irradiation: Experimental analysis, published at Acta Astronautica.

The researchers propose an interesting way to extract water from the potentially water-rich icy regions at the Moon’s pole. These regions are of interest to space agencies because the presence of water, which can be extracted or retrieved, is required for human exploration.