• Question: is there 0.0 oxegen in the moon

    Asked by __a.i.d.e.n_ to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 13 Dec 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Winnard

      Andrew Winnard answered on 13 Dec 2015:


      Until recently, most everyone accepted the conventional wisdom that the moon has virtually no atmosphere. Just as the discovery of water on the moon transformed our textbook knowledge of Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor, recent studies confirm that our moon does indeed have an atmosphere consisting of some unusual gases, including sodium and potassium, which are not found in the atmospheres of Earth, Mars or Venus. It’s an infinitesimal amount of air when compared to Earth’s atmosphere. At sea level on Earth, we breathe in an atmosphere where each cubic centimeter contains 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules; by comparison the lunar atmosphere has less than 1,000,000 molecules in the same volume. That still sounds like a lot, but it is what we consider to be a very good vacuum on Earth. In fact, the density of the atmosphere at the moon’s surface is comparable to the density of the outermost fringes of Earth’s atmosphere where the International Space Station orbits.

      So you are right there is no Oxygen on the moon like there is here on Earth.

      BBUUUUTTT

      We have found ice on the Moon in some of the really deep craters! Ice is solid water and water is made up of two molecules…. Oxygen and Hydrogen. You can use a process called electrolysis to split water into the sepeare oxygen and hyrodgen molecules. Doing this would create Oxygen for you to breath and you can burn hyrdogen for energy or using for rocket fuel in your spaceship 🙂 So there isn’t any pure Oxygen on the moon, but there is some in the ice that you could extract 🙂

      Here is a video for you that explains how to get Oxygen and Hydrogen from water:

      PS: The astro support team will start getting evicted this week from Tuesday! If you like my replies where I try to include videos for you then please vote for me – and check out the videos I made myself specially for you guys this weekend on my profile page! 😀

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