The American spaceflight company Blue Origin, owned by American billionaire Jeff Bezos, is working on something interesting: converting moon dust into solar energy.
The company indicated, in a statement, that it is now able to produce solar cells, using soil similar to lunar soil. The lunar regolith is the surface material found on the moon, which is completely different from the soil of the typical Earth’s surface, and it is a mixture of dust, rock chips, minerals and glass, and the soil that Blue Origin used in its technology is an alternative to the real thing, to mimic the composition and properties of what is present actually on the moon, reports Al-Rai daily.
“Blue Origin” indicated that in order to obtain the materials necessary to manufacture the solar cell, it used a mixture of intense heat and electricity.
The company said, “Using lunar regolith simulators, our reactor is capable of producing iron, silicon and aluminum through electrolysis, which separates all of these elements from the oxygen associated with it. Silicon is a major component of the solar cell, and our process produces a very pure version of silicon suitable for solar energy.”
Blue Origin also confirms in its statement that its technology is safe for the environment, indicating that it does not require toxic chemicals, which are often used to purify silicon on Earth. It also claims that its solar cells can last more than 10 years.
“Although our vision is technically ambitious, our technology is now real,” Blue Origin added.
The invention of the “Blue Origin” company comes as part of its efforts to establish a human presence on the surface of the moon in the future, and to achieve a sustainable human presence there, and in order to achieve this, humanity will need to use local resources.
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