# NASA is planning to make water and oxygen on the Moon and Mars by 2020



## Cyberghost (Feb 7, 2014)

*NASA is forging ahead with plans to make water, oxygen, and hydrogen on the surface of the Moon and Mars. If we ever want to colonize other planets, it is vital that we find a way of extracting these vital gases and liquids from moons and planets, rather than transporting them from Earth (which is prohibitively expensive, due to Earth’s gravity). The current plan is to land a rover on the Moon in 2018 that will try to extract hydrogen, water, and oxygen — and then hopefully, Curiosity’s successor will try to convert the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into oxygen in 2020 when it lands on Mars.*

In 2018, NASA hopes to put a rover on the Moon that will carry the RESOLVE (Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction) science payload. RESOLVE will contain the various tools necessary to carry out in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Basically, RESOLVE will sift through the Moon’s regolith (loose surface soil) and heat them up, looking for traces of hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be combined to make water. There is also some evidence that there’s water ice on the surface of the Moon — RESOLVE will find out for certain by heating the soil and seeing of water vapor emerges.

A similar payload would be attached to Curiosity’s successor, which is currently being specced out by NASA and will hopefully launch in 2020. This second IRSU experiment will probably suck in carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere, filter out the dust, and then process the CO2 into oxygen.

If either tech demonstration works as planned, future missions might include large-scale ISRU devices that are capable of producing significant amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, and water on the Moon or Mars. This would probably be the most important advance since we first landed on the Moon in the ’60s. Basically, as it stands, space travel needs lots of hydrogen and oxygen (rocket propellant) and water (to keep astronauts alive). Water has the unfortunate characteristic of being both heavy and incompressible, meaning it’s very difficult and expensive to lift large amounts of it into space (gravity can be really annoying sometimes). Likewise, unless we come up with some other way of powering our spacecraft, it’s infeasible to carry the rocket fuel that we’d need for exploration from Earth.

In short, if we want to colonize space, we really, really need some kind of base outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, preferably on the Moon — but Mars would be good, too

NASA is planning to make water and oxygen on the Moon and Mars by 2020


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## sujoyp (Feb 8, 2014)

Hope some of these plans gets success ...soo we can see people living on moon in next 20yrs


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## harshilsharma63 (Feb 8, 2014)

No... don't spoil the Moon too!


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## TheHumanBot (Feb 8, 2014)

try to make better humans than.


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## ramkumarvcbe (Feb 8, 2014)

Oh, yes. I would like to be on Moon with my gal.


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## vidhubhushan (Feb 8, 2014)

then children will not listen - chandamama door ke


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## Nanducob (Feb 8, 2014)

great news:/


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## rijinpk1 (Feb 8, 2014)

harshilsharma63 said:


> No... don't spoil the Moon too!



NASA is forced to do do  ,because earth is dying...


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## Ronnie11 (Feb 9, 2014)

rijinpk1 said:


> NASA is forced to do do  ,because earth is dying...



Lol so go to the moon which is technically dead already


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## seamon (Feb 11, 2014)

To whosoever posted this.........Thank you O great news deity.
It helped me in my debate today. Topic was Money spent on space research is a waste which can be better utilized in improving the living conditions of the poor. Mine was one of the best.


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## sam_738844 (Feb 11, 2014)

^^

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” 
Ken Olson, president Digital Equipment Corp (1977)

--We have 1.5 billion active PC users as we speak.


"Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.”
 Time Magazine (1966)

--100+ e commerce site in India alone.


I predict the Internet in 1996 [will] catastrophically collapse.” 
--Robert Metcalfe (1995)

--  

“Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.”
Marty Cooper, inventor (1981)

--4.3 Billion Mobile Phone Users as we speak, 2.5 billion of them are from ASIA PAC




> Money spent on space research is a waste which can be better utilized in improving the living conditions of the poor



--??


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## seamon (Feb 11, 2014)

sam_738844 said:


> ^^
> ...
> 
> 
> ...



That was a debate topic I spoke against the motion.


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## Darth Vader (Feb 11, 2014)

seamon said:


> That was a debate topic I spoke against the motion.


*Bravo !!!
*


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## seamon (Feb 11, 2014)

takemein said:


> *Bravo !!!
> *



Why thank you!


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## sam_738844 (Feb 12, 2014)

Please elaborate.


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## Ronnie11 (Feb 12, 2014)

seamon said:


> To whosoever posted this.........Thank you O great news deity.
> It helped me in my debate today. Topic was Money spent on space research is a waste which can be better utilized in improving the living conditions of the poor. Mine was one of the best.



Thats just another extreme way of looking at this. A lot of these space research also helps develop technology which helps our day to day lives. For eg Formula 1 sport is known as an expensive oil burning sport but a lot of the innovations in F1 have made it to our passenger vehicles as well.


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