But that oxygen is tightly bound into the minerals mentioned above. The Moon’s regolith is made up of approximately 45% oxygen. Meanwhile, the materials on the Moon’s surface is basically regolith in its original, untouched form. Earth’s soil is imbued with remarkable physical, chemical and biological characteristics. The result is a matrix of minerals which were not present in the original rocks. It has been created by a vast array of organisms working on the soil’s parent material - regolith, derived from hard rock - over millions of years. Soil as we know it is pretty magical stuff that only occurs on Earth. Some people call the Moon’s surface layer lunar “soil”, but as a soil scientist I’m hesitant to use this term. This material has resulted from the impacts of meteorites crashing into the lunar surface over countless millennia. On the Moon these minerals exist in a few different forms including hard rock, dust, gravel and stones covering the surface. All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form our lungs can access. Minerals such as silica, aluminium, and iron and magnesium oxides dominate the Moon’s landscape. And the Moon is mostly made of the same rocks you’ll find on Earth (although with a slightly greater amount of material that came from meteors). Oxygen can be found in many of the minerals in the ground around us. If we could extract oxygen from regolith, would it be enough to support human life on the Moon? Instead it’s trapped inside regolith - the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the Moon’s surface. That said, there is actually plenty of oxygen on the Moon. It’s not the sort of gaseous mixture that could sustain oxygen-dependent mammals such as humans. In October, the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the Moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the Moon.Īlthough the Moon does have an atmosphere, it’s very thin and composed mostly of hydrogen, neon and argon. And at the forefront of these efforts has been a laser-sharp focus on finding the best way to produce oxygen on the Moon. Alongside advances in space exploration, we’ve recently seen much time and money invested into technologies that could allow effective space resource utilisation. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at. This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the Galileo mission home page at. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. These features may provide evidence for springs of some liquid, probably a sulfur compound rather than water. Arrows in the inset indicate some examples of these. Several intriguing, narrow, channel-like features about 10 meters (11 yards) wide and a few hundred meters (yards) long can be seen. Sublimation of sulfur-dioxide-rich substances, their transition from solid to gaseous form, may also play a role in the segregation of bright and dark materials. In places, layers of bright and dark material appear to have been exposed by some process of erosion. The surface is quite varied in appearance, ranging from smooth patches of material to the much rougher top of the promontory. Galileo scientists estimate that the promontory is up to 400 meters (one-fourth mile) high. A raised promontory at the bottom of the center image casts shadows into the lower right corner of the left image. The Sun illuminates the surface from the right, but topographic shading is difficult to see because of the strong contrasts in brightness of the surface materials. The image is centered at 32 degrees north latitude and 193 degrees west longitude The images are rotated relative to one another because of Galileo's great speed as it flies above the surface of Io. North is to the top of the images and the entire mosaic spans about 17 kilometers (11 miles) from east to west. This mosaic of images acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on February 22, 2000, shows the highest resolution view ever obtained of the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, 5 to 6 meters (16 to 20 feet) per picture element.
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