Lunar Water Ice
Water is the petroleum of the 21st-century space economy. While the Moon's equatorial regions are bone-dry, its poles hide millions of tons of ancient ice, offering a lifeline for deep space exploration.
Primary Location
Lunar South Pole
Environment
PSRs (Shadowed)
Temperature
-233°C (-387°F)
Primary Use
Rocket Propellant
Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs)
Because the Moon has almost no axial tilt, sunlight always hits the poles at a horizontal, grazing angle. This means the bottoms of deep craters (like Shackleton Crater) have not seen a single ray of sunlight in billions of years.
These Permanently Shadowed Regions act as "cold traps." When comets and water-rich meteors crashed into the Moon over the eons, the vaporized water migrated to these craters and froze solid. It has remained trapped there ever since, mixed with the lunar dust.
Refining the Fuel
Mining this ice involves sending rovers into the pitch-black craters to scoop the icy regolith, applying heat to sublimate the water into vapor, and capturing it. Once purified, solar arrays on the crater rims can power electrolysis to split the water (H₂O) into Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) and Liquid Oxygen (LOX)—the most efficient chemical rocket propellant known to physics.