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Table of Contents
STATEMENT
“The countries which have the capacity to bring that source from the moon to Earth will
dictate the process,’’ said K. Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
“I don’t want to be just a part of them, I want to lead them.’’
BASICS
India’s space program wants to go where no nation has gone before—to the south side of the moon.
And once it gets there, it will study the potential for mining a source of waste-free nuclear energy that could be worth trillions of dollars.
HELIUM 3
The presence of helium-3 was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions,
and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in
December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-3.
THE RACE
A lot of countries and companies are keen on exploiting helium-3, which scientists hope could be used in a kind of nuclear fusion that doesn’t create radioactive waste.
HELIUM-3 AND NUCLEAR FUSION
This is used to turn water into steam that then drives a turbine to produce electricity.
Current nuclear power plants have nuclear fission reactors in which uranium nuclei are
split part.
MINING HELIUM-3 ON THE MOON
• Helium-3 is, however, emitted by the Sun within its solar winds. Our
atmosphere prevents any of this helium-3 arriving on the Earth.
However, as it does not have an atmosphere, there is nothing to
stop helium-3 arriving on the surface of the Moon and being
absorbed by the lunar soil.
• As a result, it has been estimated that there are around 1,100,000
metric tonnes of helium-3 on the surface of the Moon down to a
depth of a few metres. This helium-3 could potentially be extracted
by heating the lunar dust to around 600 degrees C, before bringing
it back to the Earth to fuel a new generation of nuclear fusion
power plants.
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