regolith

The floating, sticky dust, technically known as lunar regolith, also made it tough to see during landing or during surface activities; for example, the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969 repeatedly tripped over an external TV cable obscured in powder.

The box-like machine was now ingesting small quantities of a dusty regolith – a mixture of dust and sharp grit with a chemical composition mimicking real lunar soil.

Soon, that regolith was gloop.

The company says it has had to improve how the machine works over time so that it can better cope with the extremely jagged, abrasive texture of the regolith itself.

The process under investigation here was molten regolith electrolysis, which involves using electricity to split lunar minerals containing oxygen, in order to extract the oxygen directly.