Blue Origin has created two new departments under the Blue Alchemist project, one dedicated to the orbital station project, and the other dedicated to economic activities on the Moon. NASA has already received a commercial proposal from them for the use of some technologies for the processing of lunar regolith in the Artemis mission. It is reported that working solar panels, electrical wiring and protective materials for lunar structures have already been successfully created from an accurate imitation of regolith.
The Blue Alchemist project has been running quietly for two years now, as part of which scientists and engineers are looking for ways to process artificial regolith, which is chemically completely consistent with the lunar soil. This is an extremely useful material, as it is rich in silicon, aluminum, iron, magnesium and other elements. Calculations show that the complete processing of regolith will reduce to zero the need to supply construction and production materials for lunar colonies from the Earth.
The high-temperature electrolysis technology developed at Blue Alchemist made it possible to isolate 99% pure silicon from regolith, which became the basis for full-fledged solar panels. From other extracted elements, transparent glass protective casings for them were obtained, plus metals suitable for creating building structures. Alas, all this has so far been implemented only in laboratories, so now Blue Origin intends to test its developments on the real moon.
Solar panel made from artificial regolith
