Inventors hope to figure out how to create a reliable, clean water supply on the moon, and a microwave from Tesco could play a role.
The goal of establishing a manned lunar base was launched many moons ago, but has not yet been realized. Because reliance on Earth’s water supplies is risky and expensive, one of the many challenges is how to extract and purify water from ice that lies in craters at the moon’s south pole.
Such a facility would not only provide a source of drinking water and crops, but the water could also be split into hydrogen, which could be used as rocket fuel, and into oxygen for residents to breathe.
The UK Space Agency has now announced that it is awarding £30,000 in seed funding, with expert support, to each of the ten UK teams competing to solve the problem.
Lolan Naicker of Naicker Scientific Ltd, one of the UK finalists in the Aqualunar Challenge, said that by introducing the riddle to the public, people with very different approaches to problem-solving and very different backgrounds could contribute possible answers.
“It’s extremely difficult to actually come up with a viable solution,” he said.
Naicker added that the first part of his team’s plan is to microwave the dirty lunar ice. “I’m literally going to buy a microwave oven from Tesco across the road today, and take it apart, take the magnetron out and then try to incorporate that into the first part of my process,” he said.
Naicker and his team are working on a “SonoChem System” that will use powerful sound waves to generate millions of tiny bubbles in lunar water, which produces high temperatures and pressures. That, Naicker said, produces highly reactive species known as free radicals that break down contaminants in the water.
But while the team has a core idea, there is much more to be done.
“Remember, we have to go from this dirty ice to liquid water first. And we have to do this in an environment of -200C – these are vacuum conditions,” he said.
The teams will have just seven months to develop their ideas before a winner and two runners-up are chosen in spring 2025, with the selected trio sharing a further £300,000 to continue working on their solutions. An additional £600,000 will be spent rewarding solutions from Canadian-led teams.
Meganne Christian, a reserve astronaut at the British Space Agency and chair of the Aqualunar Challenge judging panel, said it was still early days for NASA’s Artemis mission, which is supported by the European Space Agency and others and aims to send humans back to the moon.
“So it’s a good time to have innovators looking at how we can purify water on the moon. And honestly, we didn’t really know there was water on the moon until recently,” she said.
Christian added that the Aqualunar Challenge – which is funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Bilateral Fund and managed by Challenge Works in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency – has a hugely diverse range of finalists, with teams also considering how the technologies could be applied on Earth.
Naicker said his team has a number of plans. “We could build a slightly larger system, put it on the back of a van and drive it into a war-torn area,” he said. “We could develop smaller devices for the developing world where access to clean water is a real challenge.”
Christian added that the idea is that the new technologies could also be used on other space missions where water ice is present.
“We know, for example, that there is water ice on Mars. So absolutely, these technologies can be adapted for use on Mars and other planetary bodies, wherever we go in the future,” she said.
The nine other British finalists in the Aqualunar Challenge are:
Nascent Semiconductor Ltdwho is developing a compact system called the Titania-Diamond Annular Reactor (TiDAR). This will break down contaminants in lunar soil using a titanium dioxide catalyst activated by LED-based UV light with diamond electrodes.
The British Interplanetary Society in Londonwho invented Ganymede’s Chalice – a device in which a curved mirror focuses the sun’s rays onto an airtight melting pot of lunar ice. The components in the ice can then in turn be cooked and stored.
Queen Mary University of Londonwhose team is developing AquaLunarPure: a reactor that heats lunar ice until it becomes solid material and then heats it to more than 373 degrees Celsius at 220 bar of pressure to convert it into ‘supercritical water’, removing contaminants through oxidation.
Minima Design Ltd, Suffolkwho developed a Cyclic Volatile Extractor (CVE), in which dirty ice is heated in a novel closed chamber under varying pressures, allowing various contaminants to be removed and stored.
RedSpace LtdFrank has devised, a Filtered Regolith Aqua Neutralisation Kit, in which lunar soil is heated to remove volatile gases before the remaining material passes through a membrane to separate solids and liquid. The latter is then distilled to obtain water.
Perspective Space-Tech Ltdwho created an innovative lunar water system called I-LUNASYS, in which lunar samples are heated to remove impurities as gas. Reverse osmosis is then used to separate water molecules from the sample, with the final step involving a UV filtration system.
Shaun Fletcher and Dr Lukman Yusuf from the University of Glasgowwho plan to melt dirty ice, remove large soil particles, and then pump the water through an ultrasonic system. This will remove gases, destroy pollutants, and clump together any moon dust, before the water is filtered to remove any remaining pollutants.
Regolithix BVwho are developing a Regolith Ice Plasma Purifier for Lunar Exploration (RIPPLE), in which dirty lunar ice is heated, separating water vapor and solid particles using a device similar to a salad spinner. The vapor can then be split using a plasma torch, and the hydrogen and oxygen isolated using a molecular sieve.
Interstellar mappingwho devised a Static Water Extraction System (SWES) to sublimate various volatiles in lunar soil at lower temperatures than ice and water are extracted and stored. The sample is then reheated to convert the water to steam, which is extracted and cooled.