HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Two Huntsville scientists have cooked up a way to get water from the moon.

And it’s based on a common kitchen appliance – the microwave oven.

The concept will be an important ingredient when astronauts return to the moon and beyond.

Once a base on the moon is established, there are plans to use it as a possible refueling stop on the way to Mars.

“This is exploration,” said Dr. Bill Kaukler of the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Center for Materials Research.

Kaukler and Dr. Ed Etheridge of the Materials and Processes Laboratory at the Marshall Space Flight Center have proposed using microwaves to draw water from below the lunar surface.

Kaukler said they were inspired by the results of 1994’s Clementine mission in which the probe, while mapping the moon, uncovered the possible existence of ice within some of the moon’s craters.

This discovery was confirmed in early 1998 by NASA’s lunar prospector.

The surface is covered by regolith, or silicate rock that is the lunar version of top soil, Kaukler said. It’s about two meters deep “and where you have silicates, you have oxygen.”

He said hydrogen is found at the poles where the temperature is about minus-150 degrees Celsius. The water was brought to the moon, as it was to Earth, he said, by comets – which are made of ice – crashing into the surface.

“If you estimate, there would be billions of tons of water,” Ethridge said.

“That makes it worthwhile to extract,” Kaukler said. “And one of the beauties of this is we don’t have to dig.”

Digging could stir up the fine, gritty dust. The microscopic particles then could harm the astronauts’ spacesuits and their equipment, he said.

To get to the water, microwaves would be shot into the regolith, “thawing” the ice to about minus-50 degrees Celsius. Water vapor would be drawn to the surface by the moon’s vacuum environment.

The water vapor would then be collected on a plate as ice and scraped off to be used as water for the astronauts. The hydrogen and oxygen can also be separated through electrolysis to use as fuel for a trip to Mars.

In their Marshall lab, the scientists used a microwave oven, a vacuum, water and a simulant to regolith to verify their findings.

“We put some water in the simulant and placed it inside the microwave,” Kaukler said. “Then we used the vacuum to replicate the lunar atmosphere.

“We were able to get about 95 percent of the water back in about two minutes.”

Another use of the microwaves would be to “melt” the lunar surface. The process would help create dust-free landing and launch sites as well as smoother floors for structures and roads for traveling without kicking up dust.

“For surface site preparation, the microwaves would melt the top layer, glazing it, so it’s not all dust,” Ethridge said. “It would create a cobblestone effect.”

And there’s also a financial side.

Ethridge said the project director of Clementine said the poles of the moon could be the most valuable real estate in the solar system.

“There have been studies that showed (getting the water) to be economically viable,” he said. “It could be the first commercial venture.”

PH END MCLAUGHLIN

(Budd McLaughlin is a staff writer for the Huntsville (Ala.) Times. He can be contacted at budd.mclaughlin(at)htimes.com.)

2008-10-07-MOON-WATER

AP-NY-10-07-08 1657EDT