\The European Space Agency (ESA) selected the team that will design and build the first experimental payload to extract oxygen from the surface of the Moon.
The team, from Thales Alenia Space in the U.K., was selected following a competition for the best oxygen extraction device, a post from ESA reveals. ESA's Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration picked the Thales-led team after evaluating three rival designs.
Such devices can help to provide future missions with breathable oxygen as well as rocket propulsion. In fact, in April last year, NASA achieved a historic first by extracting oxygen from Mars thanks to a device called MOXIE that flew to the red planet aboard the Perseverance rover.
The Thales Alenia Space team will develop a small piece of equipment that will help ESA to evaluate whether larger models would be feasible on the Moon.
The team's design will be able to extract 50-100 grams of oxygen from lunar regolith, which would be achieved by extracting approximately 70 percent of all available oxygen. As a point of reference, 5 grams of oxygen is enough for approximately 10 minutes of breathing time for astronauts.
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