Lunar Mining

What is Lunar mining?

lunar mining is the idea of extracting water, oxygen, metals, and other
valuable materials from the lunar soil . This could help to sustain life and
develop fuels for space exploration.

Benefits of lunar mining:

Geological surveys show the moon has three essential resources: water,
rare earth metals, and Helium-3.

Helium-3 is a rare isotope among natural isotopes on earth and has the
potential for replacing Uranium-235 for nuclear reactor fuel and becoming
a source of limitless green energy.

There are a total of 17 elements, like Yttrium,Europium and Scandium, are

rare on Earth but some of them could be found on the moon.It is possible
to use moon metals in the engines of automobiles and superconductors

Is lunar mining possible?

Previous lunar mining concepts have used "thermal ablation," which heats
water frozen into the lunar regolith(the powdery surface which covers the
moon) but thermal ablation doesn't allow for multiple types of resources to
be extracted all at once, pulling it out as water vapor that can then be
captured. One new technique called "ablative arc mining," would allow for
water, metals, and other resources to all be pulled from the lunar surface
material all at once, improving upon older lunar mining concepts and
methods. The technique would use an arc of electricity like putting
lightning over the surface of the moon.
  Initiatives taken for moon mining:
The technique of Ablative arc mining was recently chosen as part of the
Phase I Fellows program for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concept
(NIAC). The main challenge in ablative arc mining is that it takes quite a lot
of power to create an electrical arc in the moon's barely-there atmosphere. the
NIAC team is working on the technique in labs to utilize the technique in
space soon .our thinking should not be about how we could use these
resources, it is about how we should use these resources efficiently.

Moon mining is just a first step. it could be impossible to have lunar

settlements, without being able to collect lunar water and other resources.
And because the moon is such an important gateway step to get to Mars, we
would probably then struggle to have human settlements on Mars in the
future.
By
Aadhitya pranav.s
X-A
114357