A strange new powder spotted in a Cleveland lab could help astronauts carry less to the Moon.
Researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center recently discovered and tested a material that could help future lunar missions by handling molten Moon rock, part of NASA’s push to help explorers “live off the land” using lunar resources.
NASA is studying ways to melt Moon rocks to extract metals for infrastructure and oxygen for fuel and life support. Through the agency’s Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities fellowship, Dr. Kevin Yu, now a technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, worked with Dr. Jamesa Stokes, a materials research engineer at NASA Glenn, to study how different substances reacted with liquefied Moon dust.
“You could call it lava, because it’s basically rocks that are crushed up and then melted,” Yu said. “It’s very corrosive, and it will very quickly eat through a lot of commonly used refractory, or heat-resistant, materials.”
About six months into the research, Yu and Stokes found something new. After mixing simulated lunar dust with scandium oxide and heat-treating it in a red-hot furnace, they found an unknown material had formed.
The team checked their results repeatedly, but the substance did not match any of the more than 1 million materials in their X-ray analysis database. They then started measuring its chemical composition from scratch.
To make small, isolated samples and keep testing how it reacted with molten Moon dust, the researchers used grinding and mixing equipment to crush about eight basic oxide components in ethyl alcohol before baking the mixture at more than 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit in the furnace.
“It’s actually a very cool-looking powder; it goes in pink, almost like strawberry milk,” Yu said. “It has a built-in color indicator, so by the time you’re done with it, it turns to a light beige or tan color, and that’s how you know the reaction has proceeded the way you wanted it to.”
After analyzing the results, the team found the new material was not corroded too quickly by molten Moon dirt and could withstand the temperatures needed to melt it, up to six times hotter than a kitchen oven.
The material contains scandium oxide, which can be expensive, but NASA said it costs much less than precious metals such as platinum that are normally used in high-temperature processes.
The findings could shape NASA’s designs for future technology to extract resources from Moon rocks. The material could be used for pipes or basins that hold molten dust inside that technology.
Its properties also could make it useful as a coating for parts inside jet engines, which can reach similar temperatures. Researchers found it is lighter, less dense and better at insulating heat than current state-of-the-art coating materials.
Yu and Stokes have finished their initial tests, but they want to refine the material further to purify it and reduce production costs.
“Materials research will be integral to exploring the harsh environments of the Moon and beyond,” Stokes said. “You can have the best idea in the world for a structure or a vehicle, but if you don’t have the materials that have the right properties to make your vision come true, it’s not going to succeed no matter how well you design it.”
NASA said the research also supports work on Earth.
“I think trying to push what’s possible with materials also allows for a lot of breakthroughs on the terrestrial side. Having a better understanding of materials for all sorts of applications is what gets me excited to go to work in the morning,” Yu said. “That’s why I love NASA’s mission; it’s for the benefit of all.”
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