• Blue Origin has showcased its Blue Alchemist concept that turns regolith simulant into solar cells.
• Blue Origin was able to produce iron, silicon, and aluminium in its reactor.
• It remains to be seen how the solution works with actual lunar regolith.

The space exploration firm of CEO and entrepreneur Jeffery Bezos Blue Origin has shown off a rather unique proof of concept that could help humanity power its existence on our Moon.

Blue Origin calls this concept Blue Alchemist and it says it can make power systems on the Moon with materials found on its surface without bringing any special substances from Earth.

This is accomplished using regolith. But hold up, how does Blue Origin have regolith from the Moon’s surface? It doesn’t. Instead, the firm created regolith simulants that are “chemically and mineralogically equivalent to lunar regolith”.

“We have developed and qualified an efficient, scalable, and contactless process for melting and moving molten regolith that is robust to natural variations in regolith properties on the Moon,” Blue Origin writes.

Using an electric current, Blue Origin was able to produce iron, silicon, and aluminium in its reactor. Oxygen was also produced as a byproduct which can be used to sustain life or as a propellant for launches from the Moon.

The firm claims that its process purifies silicon to more than 99.999 percent, a purity required for efficient solar cells. As for protection, Blue Origin claims it can use this process to create cover glass that will last a decade.

This means that with this process and a bit of Moondust, Blue Alchemist could potentially produce solar panels with protective glass without anything special and not producing any waste.

Of course, it remains to be seen if regolith from the Moon would behave in a similar way to the simulated stuff.

Lunar regolith is incredibly annoying and dangerous stuff. It sticks to spacesuits and can cause damage to instruments and other hardware over time.

Being able to turn it into something useful is a smart idea but given that the lunar surface is bombarded with cosmic radiation could change how it behaves in Blue Origin’s reactor.

With that having been said, it’s a smart idea and we’re keen to see if it works in practice.

[Image – Blue Origin]