Chang 'e-5 brought back lunar soil samples

The soil samples brought back by Chang 'e-5 could be the key to building a future lunar base.

Chinese scientists believe that if developed, the moon's soil could help rocket fuel burn better, producing oxygen.

The moon has no atmosphere and, as far as we can tell, no life. Oxygen doesn't seem to have anything to do with the moon. So how does the moon's soil produce oxygen?

Let's go into the amazing lunar soil, it will be a great treasure of the future.

Lunar soil and energy

It's no surprise that lunar soil is rich in helium-3, the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen.

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, at 24%. It should be a common element, but Earth may have a BUG that says it has very little of it.

The Earth's very small amount of helium is at the very top of the atmosphere, and the rest is in the core, produced by alpha fission.

These helium atoms penetrate through the Earth's crust, mixing with natural gas, and most of the helium on Earth comes from separating natural gas.

The moon, on the other hand, is rich in helium-3, with preliminary estimates of more than 1 million tons. Scientists can get helium-3 from the moon's soil by heating it to 700 degrees Celsius.

Helium-3 is an isotope of helium that reacts thermonuclear with deuterium atoms, releasing enormous amounts of energy.

What's more, the thermonuclear reaction between the two produces no neutrons, only protons, which means there's no radiation involved.

Much of our current nuclear technology is out of our control, which is why Chernobyl and Fukushima were created.

Thermonuclear reactions of helium-3 with deuterium atoms, without radiation, provide sufficient safety against uncontrolled nuclear power.

It's also one of the safest and most effective nuclear reactions out there.

Using about 100 tons of helium-3 to participate in thermonuclear reactions produces enough energy to power the world for a year.

The moon has at least a million tons of helium-3, which, if mined, could provide an energy crunch for the next 10,000 years.

However, helium-3 is not the only surprise of the lunar soil. As people study the lunar soil, especially the lunar soil brought back by Chang 'e-5, our understanding of the moon has been updated.

Because Chinese scientists have found that the soil on the moon can produce oxygen.

Lunar soil and oxygen

A Lew study of lunar soil conducted by Nanjing University in China has found that the lunar soil contains titanium, titanium-rich materials, and many titanium compounds.

If it reacts with water and carbon dioxide in the presence of sunlight, these substances can act as catalysts, and the result is oxygen.

This discovery is very impressive! The moon has no atmosphere of its own, and it is a complete vacuum above it, so it is not normally associated with oxygen.

Today, lunar soil can be used as a catalyst to produce oxygen, an important discovery for future lunar bases.

Since carbon dioxide and water can be used to make oxygen in the light of the sun, a future lunar base could use this technology to recycle matter and harvest the gases needed by the body.

What's more, scientists believe the soil could be used as fuel for future rockets that could generate more thrust, or even launch rockets from the surface of the moon.

When a rocket is launched, it needs to fire, which is when the fuel inside it burns.

Due to the rocket launch race against time, it is necessary to reach speed in a very short time, if the oxygen content in the air to support combustion, the fuel is likely to occur incomplete combustion, not up to the expected required energy, rocket propulsion strength is not enough.

So, inside the rocket, you actually have an accelerant, which is pre-prepared oxygen, so that the fuel burns enough to generate enough energy.

For a rocket to be launched on the moon, the accelerant needed would need to be fully loaded in advance, because the moon has no atmosphere, let alone support the rocket's natural ignition.

If the lunar soil could be developed in the future, it could be harvested locally to generate energy from helium-3 and use the material in the soil as a catalyst to produce oxygen, which could be used as an accelerant.

The moon's diameter is much smaller than the Earth's, so its escape velocity is much smaller than the Earth's, so it takes much less energy to launch a rocket from the moon than from the Earth.

In addition to launching rockets on the moon, a radio telescope is also expected to be built there, which would reduce interference with signals from Earth.

The raw materials used to build these are all transported from Earth, and the cost would be enormous.

If we could use some of the materials on the moon, so that we could reduce the cost and shorten the engineering time, it would be a great advance for mankind.

Lunar soil and Earth-moon history

Another role of lunar soil is to explore the moon's history.

Early scientists believed that the moon was part of the Earth, and even calculated that the Pacific Ocean was exactly the same size as the moon, and therefore the Pacific Ocean was the moon that had been thrown away.

If this is true, then the moon's rock composition would be almost identical to Earth's.

Some scientists believe that the moon is a small body captured by the Earth. If so, then the composition of the moon would be very different from that of the Earth, and more likely unrelated.

After Apollo 11 brought the first samples of lunar soil back to Earth, the moon's soil and rocks were analyzed.

Some of them are the same as the Earth's rock and soil, and some of them are different, as if the earth's soil had been mixed with something else.

This led scientists to believe that about 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth was hit by an asteroid that knocked out some of its material.

These pieces were mixed up with pieces of the asteroid, and they became a natural satellite of the Earth as they circled the planet under its gravity.

This is the most widely accepted astronomical theory of the moon's birth -- the impact theory.

It was a beautiful coincidence that people thought the Pacific Ocean was where the moon left off.

Because right now the Pacific Ocean is about the size of the moon, but the Pacific Ocean hasn't been there forever, it didn't exist at all.

About 250 million years ago, all the continents on Earth joined together to form the supercontinent Pangea, after which the four oceans were born as the plates fell apart.

250 million years ago there was only a pan-ocean, there was no Pacific, there was no moon.

In plain English, the moon was "born" by the Earth, but not by a single Earth ball, but by another asteroid.

Lunar soil and the future

The moon plays an important role in human's future space exploration. It is the only celestial body outside the earth that human has landed on so far.

However, the moon is the Earth's natural satellite, still within the Earth's gravitational pull, so in a way, man hasn't left the Earth yet.

But this does not mean that human beings will stop here, the moon in the future can be used as a springboard or transit station, to provide energy and material for human beings.

The moon's soil and rocks also contain large amounts of iron, magnesium and other metals, which could be the Earth's mines, and its helium-3 could be a future energy source for humanity.

As Earth's satellite, the moon will play the biggest role.

Hawking has said that Earth's environment is becoming increasingly inhospitable to humans, and that to leave Earth, humans would need to conduct countless drills on the moon.

Some scientists even think that if we land on Mars, we can launch rockets directly from the moon, which can save time and fuel.

The moon has shielded Earth from countless meteorite impacts throughout its history, and the craters are still visible, along with others that are no longer visible.

The pit may hold secrets about Earth's early water, life, and what happened to the moon.

In fact, the moon has no soil, the original moon only rocks, the present lunar soil is the solar storm bombardment of the lunar surface, the moon's rock directly "weathering", produced the lunar soil.

Scientists speculate that water may be locked away at the moon's poles, making it less desolate in the future.