Lunar mining, the new frontier

The chang'e 5 mission consisted of a robotic ship launched on November 23, 2020, the ship landed on the lunar surface on December 1 and there it took 1731 grams of soil samples that it later sent to earth where they arrived on December 16 of the same year.

Once the samples were analyzed, they determined that they found a new mineral, it has been named changa stone is a phosphate in the form of a columnar crystal, scientists found it in particles of lunar basalt, on earth the main use of phosphates is the manufacture of fertilizers, since the phosphorus of which phosphate is composed is essential for living organisms.

China with this finding becomes after the US and the Soviet Union and the third nation to discover a new mineral on the moon and this is the sixth mineral discovered by humanity on our natural satellite.

It should be noted that, in the samples collected by the Chinese mission, Helium 3 was also found, it was already known that there was helium 3 on the lunar surface, it is an isotope of helium that occurs naturally in stars due to reactions of nuclear fusion between hydrogen nuclei, the sun produces it in large quantities and disperses it thanks to the solar wind that ends up depositing it on the surface of the moon.

The interesting thing is that it turns out that helium 3 is a useful fuel in experimental nuclear fusion processes, he clarified that profitable nuclear fusion has not yet been achieved, but one of the main ways to achieve it would be to use helium 3, the problem is that the earth's magnetosphere deflects the solar wind, so it is very difficult to find helium 3 on our planet, you have to leave the earth to look for it, we can find it on the moon or on the surface of asteroids.

Currently there is no traditional mining resource that can make it profitable to travel to the moon, extract the ore and bring it to earth, but with helium 3, lunar mining could be profitable, since a small amount of helium 3 would suffice to supply an entire fusion power plant; furthermore, helium 3 is only one of the paths that are experimented with to reach fusion energy, perhaps in the end it will not be the winning path.

In any case, what is important is progress in the knowledge of lunar mining resources, their exploitation is not profitable now, but with the improvement of technologies it will be in the future, the moon is the new continent to be explored by the Humanity and the great world powers know it.

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