Most of the country's space missions are moving ahead with the goal of colonizing the Moon. Countries like the US, China, Russia and India are far ahead in comparison to others, but so far only the US has been successful in landing astronauts on the surface of the Moon.
But China has discovered something special on the moon recently, which has the potential to solve our energy problem, and China has recently announced several missions to find this remarkable object in greater quantities.
In a laboratory in Beijing, a vial of moon dust, scraped from the lunar crust by a Chinese rover, holds a tiny crystal that Crystals have the potential to power our nuclear reactors with even better results.
The crystal mineral was identified by scientists at Beijing’s Research Institute of Uranium Geology, and has been dubbed “Changesite-(Y),” after Chang’e, the Chinese mythological goddess of the moon. Also sharing that namesake is China’s first lunar sample-gathering rover, Chang’e 5, which collected the dust in the winter of 2020.
The crystal, which appears as a colorless, transparent column with a radius of just 10 microns, could prove to be a gold mine for the future of space exploration—or at least, a form of lunar gold that countries will rush to mine.
Its chemical composition contains helium-3, a heavier isotope of helium that has existed naturally within the earth’s crust since primordial times but has slowly escaped into outer space over the epochs, now becoming exceedingly rare on our planet.
according to reports by Chinese state media.
This discovery on the Moon has prompted China to announce plans to launch three uncrewed missions in the next 10 years in a bid to rival the US’ lunar presence.
The announcement of three new orbiter missions was made just a day after the announcement of the presence of the new mineral – Changesite-(Y) – in samples taken from the 2020 Change’e-5 mission.
The material itself is a somewhat unremarkable, transparent columnar mineral that forms crystals with a radius of just 10 microns. What makes Changesite-(Y) so special is the helium-3 within, an important isotope that could be remarkably useful in nuclear reactions.
Current fusion reactions generally use tritium and deuterium, but these create bi-products that are difficult to contain and the energy loss associated with the reaction is great, often exceeding the energy that can be extracted. One solution to this problem is to use helium-3, an isotope that is the only stable element that has more protons than neutrons. When you mix helium-3 and deuterium together, the reaction creates helium and a single proton, which is far easier to deal with than the alternatives. Helium-3 is a particularly promising fuel source for fusion as it produces significantly less radiation and nuclear waste than other elements do.
And to collect this crystal in huge quantity, China has announced its new missions, Because these amazing crystals have the potential to solve our energy problems on earth.
Maybe in future more countries and big companies will participate in this.
0 Comments