At the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon the uses of Helium-3 on the Moon were discussed.
A potential gas source found on the moon's surface could hold the key to meeting future energy demands as the earth's fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades, scientists say.
Mineral samples from the moon contain abundant quantities of helium 3, a variant of the gas used in lasers and refrigerators.
"When compared to the earth the moon has a tremendous amount of helium 3," Lawrence Taylor, a director of the US Planetary Geosciences Institute, said.
"When helium 3 combines with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) the fusion reaction proceeds at a very high temperature and it can produce awesome amounts of energy.
"Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year."
Helium 3 is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds and would have to be extracted from moon soil and rocks.
To extract helium 3 gas the rocks have to be heated above 800 degrees Celsius.
Dr Taylor says 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium.
Only 10 kilograms of helium are available on earth.
Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam has told the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon that the barren planet held about 1 million tonnes of helium 3.
"The moon contains 10 times more energy in the form of helium 3 than all the fossil fuels on the earth," Mr Kalam said.
Such a possibility were discussed in President Bush's space exploration initiative.
Lunar ISRU [in situ resource utilization] would aim first for self-sufficiency; then it would export to Earth electricity and Helium-3 for fusion reactors.
Nevertheless, the President's plan still has critics within the science community.
A new report released by an American Physical Society (APS) Special Committee on NASA. Funding for Astrophysics has questioned the space agency's Moon, Mars and Beyond initiative. The APS assessment warns that the cost of overcoming technological challenges to make real the plan could far exceed budgetary projections and that numerous approved science programs could be jeopardized.
Returning Americans to the Moon and landing on Mars would have a powerful symbolic significance, the APS report observes, but it would constitute only a small step in the advancement of knowledge, since much will already be known from exploration with the robotic precursor probes that are necessary to guarantee the safety of any human mission.
Solving our over-reliance on fossil fuels a small step? Hardly. As I commented earlier we need to get beyond the politics, return to the Moon, and move on to Mars.
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