NASA uses COMSOL Multiphysics to Research Affordable Water Extraction on the Moon Using Microwaves

Posted: 3 months ago by: Brian Kenyon | Add your comment |

There is a great write up today at POPSCI.com on how Ed Ethridge has used COMSOL Multiphysics software to affordably extract water from the moon. All of us should remember Ed Ethridge's Keynote from the recent 2009 COMSOL Conference on "Using Microwaves for Extracting Water From the Moon".

After Popular Science asked Ed about the followup to his research he stated, " Well, to use more powerful microwaves in the megahertz or gigahertz range would require tens of thousands of dollars. The hardware is available, but it is very expensive. NASA's In-Situ Research Utilization (ISRU) project has a minuscule budget, so it's hard to build prototype hardware like that. So instead we've been using the Comsol multiphysics modeling tool, to model the many variables. Comsol can give us pretty reasonable calculations about how deep microwaves can penetrate at different wavelengths, and the rate at which the water will come out when we heat it up. Once we have more theoretical data, we can build a prototype to target a specific purpose. "

Read the the complete interview in its entirety on Popular Science's website: Interview: NASA Scientist's Plan to Extract Moon Water Affordably Using Microwaves