Moon dust and astronaut breath can keep people alive in space

Advancements in engineering have gradually pushed the possibility of sending humans into deep space closer to reality. But launching explorers into the sky with mission critical water, oxygen, and fuel is technologically challenging and enormously expensive. Taking a single kilogram of material into space can cost thousands of dollars, according to NASA.

A new study suggests that the price may soon come down. Researchers in China have shown that essential resources can be generated in space from sunlight, the moon’s soil, and astronauts’ breath (Joule 2025, DOI:10.1016/j.joule.2025.102006).

Although ice exists on the moon, it sits in hard-to-reach, extremely cold poles that have near-vacuum-like conditions—not the most attractive option for a reliable water source. But researchers have discovered that water can be generated in other ways.

By analyzing lunar soil samples collected in 2020 by Chang’E-5, China’s first mission that brought lunar samples to earth, researchers at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences found that ilmenite, a lunar-rock mineral made of iron and titanium oxides, can be heated to high temperatures, causing hydrogen deposited by solar winds to react with the oxides and produce water.

But this method of heating is energy intensive and addresses only the water part of the resource problem. Aiming to go a step further, researchers led by Zhigang Zou and Yingfang Yao of Nanjing University and Lu Wang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, instead wanted to use the moon’s natural extreme conditions to extract additional essential resources from the dust.

The researchers shined simulated bright sunlight on lunar soil samples to replicate conditions on the moon’s surface. The ilmenite absorbed the light, converted it to heat, and released water from the soil. From there, researchers collected the water and used the soil’s high temperature and natural catalytic properties to split carbon dioxide, which would be sourced from astronauts’ exhalations, into carbon monoxide and oxygen molecules. The extreme heat can also split water, liberating hydrogen, a main ingredient in fuel, Wang says in an email.

“We’ve got this nasty habit of taking Earth processes and just packaging them,” says Matthew Shaw, an astrometallurgy expert at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, who was not involved in the study. “I suspect the use of solar thermal energy is one of the ways that we can stop doing that.”

One disadvantage, though, of relying on ilmenite is that the mineral is sparse in some parts of the moon, meaning this type of processing would be restricted by location, Shaw says.

Low CO₂ availability is also a problem. “The current catalytic performance remains insufficient to fully meet the demands of extraterrestrial survival,” Wang says. The team continues to work on optimizing the reaction.