Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture isn’t just working on rockets and space stations: The Kent, Wash.-based company is also developing a technology that could someday transform the moon’s soil into materials for electricity-producing solar cells and transmission wire.
That branch of Blue Origin’s advanced development programs takes the spotlight in a blog item posted to the company’s website. The underlying approach — called molten regolith electrolysis, or MRE — has been the subject of research for decades, but Blue Origin says it’s refined the technique over the past two years.
“We can make power systems on the moon directly from materials that exist everywhere on the surface, without special substances brought from Earth,” the company says. “We have pioneered the technology and demonstrated all the steps. Our approach, Blue Alchemist, can scale indefinitely, eliminating power as a constraint anywhere on the moon.”
Over the past few years, Blue Origin and its subsidiary, Honeybee Robotics, have received funding from NASA for technologies that could turn raw materials from the moon or Mars into the stuff that’ll be needed to support future settlements — stuff that ranges from water and oxygen to iron and silicon. The approach is known as in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU.
Some of that funding has gone toward MRE experiments, but it’s not clear whether NASA has something specific in mind for Blue Alchemist. ““We’re eager to work with NASA and the ISRU community to advance this technology in support of Moon to Mars objectives,” a Blue Origin spokesperson told me in an email.
Typically, one of the reasons for publicizing such initiatives would be to whet the appetites of potential job applicants — and for what it’s worth, Blue Origin is advertising dozens of positions in its advanced development programs.
The Blue Alchemist process involves melting down lunar regolith — that is, rock and soil from the moon’s surface — and putting it in a reactor at a temperature of about 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,900 degrees Fahrenheit). For Blue Origin’s earthly experiments, simulated moon dirt is used.
An electrical current can be passed through the molten regolith to break down oxides and separate out elements such as iron, silicon and aluminum. This electrolytic method is similar to how water, or H2O, can be broken down through electrolysis to produce hydrogen and oxygen.
The oxygen coming from Blue Origin’s reaction could be used for rocket propulsion or life support, while the iron, silicon and aluminum could be used to manufacture electrical components.
“Our process purified silicon to more than 99.999%,” Blue Origin says. “This level of purity is required to make efficient solar cells. While typical silicon purification methods on Earth use large amounts of toxic and explosive chemicals, our process uses just sunlight and the silicon from our reactor.”
Material refined through the Blue Alchemist method can also be used to create the cover glass required for the solar cells, plus aluminum wire for transmission lines.
“Because our technology manufactures solar cells with zero carbon emissions, no water, and no toxic ingredients or other chemicals, it has exciting potential to directly benefit the Earth,” Blue Origin says.
Although Blue Origin’s blog item doesn’t specify how the regolith would be melted down, MRE researchers — including some who are now employed by the company — have discussed using solar concentrators or electric arc furnaces.
The idea of manufacturing industrial components in off-Earth factories, and perhaps even sending the finished goods down to Earth, has long been close to Bezos’ heart. Back in 2018, he told me that he looked forward to a “Great Inversion” in industrial production, fueled by space solar power.
“The Earth is not a very good place to do heavy industry,” Bezos said at the time. “It’s convenient for us right now, but in the not-too-distant future — I’m talking decades, maybe 100 years — it’ll start to be easier to do a lot of the things we currently do on Earth in space, because we’ll have so much energy.”
We’ve updated this report with further comment from Blue Origin.
