NASA’s Artemis mission is dedicated to establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade. To accomplish this, space agencies are revisiting fundamental needs for human survival: food, water, and shelter. In alignment with this initiative, a team of researchers from a British tech company has been awarded £150,000 (about $194,070) for creating an innovative system to supply clean drinking water on the Moon.
Their SonoChem System secured first place in the international Aqualunar Challenge, a competition sponsored by the UK Space Agency and organized alongside the Canadian Space Agency, among others. The challenge aims to drive technical advancements for future lunar living, with a specific focus on accessing clean drinking water on the Moon. The UK Space Agency revealed the winners in a statement released on Thursday.
Meganne Christian, the chair of the Aqualunar Challenge judging panel, stated, “Astronauts require a dependable water supply for drinking and cultivating food, as well as oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.” According to Christian, who is also the Reserve Astronaut and Commercial Exploration Lead at the UK Space Agency, 5.6% of the regolith near the Moon’s south pole is likely water frozen as ice. If extracted, separated from the soil, and purified, it could support a crewed base.
Under the leadership of Lolan Naicker, technical director at Naicker Scientific, the first-place team engineered a lunar microwave system to purify water derived from lunar ice. The SonoChem System utilizes sound waves to generate bubbles in the lunar water, within which high temperature and pressure produce free radicals—unstable, chemically reactive atoms that decontaminate the water.
Naicker described the challenge as similar to attempting to extract frozen water from a garden’s soil in winter, but under much harsher conditions, such as a temperature of -200°C, near-vacuum pressure, low gravity, and limited electrical power on the Moon. He also mentioned that if the SonoChem System is successful on the Moon, it could be applicable on Mars or in remote Earth regions with restricted access to clean water.
The competition’s runners-up include a father-and-sons team who devised a three-step water-filtration process providing continuous drinking water, and a team from Queen Mary University of London who developed a solution utilizing reactor power. The runners-up were awarded £100,000 (approximately $129,380) and £50,000 (around $64,690), respectively.
Patrick Vallance, the UK’s Science Minister, remarked that many of these innovations have the potential not only to drive future space explorations but also to enhance lives and address water shortages on Earth, thereby helping mitigate climate change impacts as society moves towards a net-zero future.
Technologies such as the SonoChem System are gradually turning science fiction concepts into reality, reminiscent of the Clavius Base from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
