MoonROx

MoonROx (abbreviated from "Moon Regolith Oxygen") is one of several competitions from the Centennial Challenges program sponsored by NASA. The challenge is designed to stimulate advances in oxygen production from lunar regolith.

For the first announcement of the challengecite web|url=http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/may/HQ_05128_Centennial_Challenge.html|title=NASA Announces New Centennial Challenge|date=2005-05-19|accessdate=2008-02-25] , the competition (in collaboration with the Florida Space Research Institute) featured a $250,000 prize for the first system to demonstrate extraction of five kilograms of oxygen from a regolith simulant within an eight hour period. Next year the California Space Education and Workforce Institute was selected as a new Allied Organizationcite web|url=http://ipp.nasa.gov/documents/cc_update_10-2006.pdf|title=Centennial Challenges Update — October 2006|accessdate=2008-02-25|format=PDF] . As of February 2008, the prize is $1,000,000, power requirements are limited to 10 kW and the required oxygen production rate remains unchanged.

Since extracting oxygen from silicates is difficult, and the oxygen electrochemically bound into the silicates at high temperature, it is likely that a solar-furnace may be part of the solution.

References

External links

* [http://moonrox.csewi.org/ MoonROx Challenge]