Nuclear fusion the holy grail for lunar explorers

It may be decades into the future but lunar scientists from China and other nations are already eyeing the immense potential of nuclear fusion from a precious mineral found on the moon's surface, a top scientist said on Wednesday. "To explore the moon is to solve the resource issues of the Earth," Qiao Xiaolin, an adviser to China's lunar exploration programme, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone. "Nuclear energy is the most hopeful form," said Qiao, a professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in north-eastern China. Scientists have studied the potential of the helium-3 isotope for use in nuclear fusion since the 1950s, but there is only an estimated 15 tons on earth. "It is abundant on the moon," Qiao said, with estimates of between 1 million and 5 million tons. "When obtaining nuclear power from helium-3 becomes a reality, the resources of the moon can be used to generate electricity for more than 10,000 years for the whole world," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar programme, told state media in August. Helium-3 was deposited in the powdery soil of the moon's surface over billions of years by solar winds that bring streams of charged particles from the sun, according to experts quoted on the space.com website. "Of course, we still need to resolve many technical problems of how to transport it back to Earth," Qiao said of the helium-3. Among the problems, China would need to construct a moon base to facilitate its exploitation of the helium-3, he said. Many other technical issues would need to be solved to enable helium-3 to release the energy it is theoretically capable of producing, nuclear scientists have said. "But it gives us some hope," he said of the mission to map lunar resources, which began on Wednesday with the launch into orbit of the Chang'e-I lunar satellite. "This is one of the motivations for going to the moon," Qiao said of the quest to survey and eventually bring back helium-3. The satellite should relay the first pictures of the moon in late November and will continue its lunar survey for about one year, mapping the entire surface of the moon. Its tasks include acquiring 3-D images and analysing the distribution of elements on the moon's surface, a spokesman for China's space agency said before the launch. Ouyang said earlier this year that the next lunar mission in 2012 would include a moon landing by a rover and explorer-robots, followed by a similar mission in 2017 by a spacecraft capable of returning to earth. The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party, said China could be capable of mounting a manned mission to the moon between 2020 and 2025. The newspaper quoted Ouyang as saying that lunar exploration was also "of significance to increasing China's international prestige". "Mineral deposits, energy resources and the environment on the moon constitute a crucial sphere for humankind and, if China fails to make any inquires into this sphere, the country accordingly will not have any right to speak about this," he said. "The moon exploration is a reflection of the comprehensive power of the nation," Qiao said. "It is also a reflection of the economic power," he said. "It is conducive to enhancing our national confidence." dpa bs ds