Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin has developed a process to make solar panels from Moon rocks. Take a look!
Kent, Washington based aerospace firm Blue Origin has demonstrated a process to manufacture solar panels from moon rocks. Blue Origin, founded by the retail billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, is currently on its way to developing the New Glenn rocket. However, as part of its aspiration to enable operations on the lunar surface, the firm revealed earlier this week that its « Blue Alchemist » process has successfully manufactured the materials needed for solar panel production on the Moon without requiring any materials transported from Earth. The process involves separating oxygen from iron, silicon and aluminum through electrolysis at high temperatures, and Blue Origin claims that the process can be scaled up to support any level of lunar operations.
In order to test their process, the researchers first developed their own variant of lunar rocks. Dubbed as ‘regolith simulants,’ these materials are chemically similar to Moon rocks according to Blue Origin. These simulants are then passed through a process called ‘molten regolith electrolysis’ that subjects them to high temperatures and electrical current to separate their constituents elements from each other.
