Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 9/5/2004

Question
Respected Sir,

       I want information about helium-3 on moon which can act as a fuel for us for so many years.
Please kindly send the details regarding HELIUM-3 ON MOON.


raghu.

Answer
Hi,
Raghu thanks for bringingup a new topic for me.
Actually the helium trapped there, is only in the regolith or the loose duty layer formed by "weathering" due to exposure to bombardment of micro-meteorites and regular ones that form craters. In the proces, a significant portion of the surface is pulverised and converted to talcum powder type of dust called regolith.
Titanium dioxide in this regolith traps the solar wind bombarding the moon unimpeded by any van allen magnetic belts or a thick atmosphere.
The current yield is expected to be about 1 tonne / 200 million tonnes of top soil!

Even though helium-3 is more abundant on the Moon than on the Earth, it is still very rare amounting to only 4 or 5 parts per billion in the lunar soil.

To extract one tonne of helium-3, it is estimated that 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would have to be processed. That is equivalent to mining the top 2 metres of a region 10 kms square.

Some scientists believe that in the future it could be worth it. It would only require 25 tonnes of helium-3 to provide all the power that the United States needs in a year.

Energy calculations suggest that the energy gained from Helium-3 mined on the Moon and shipped back to Earth would be 250 times that used to obtain it.

here is a link:-
http://www.nigeriamasterweb.com/nmwpg2helium3.html
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/226053.stm
This is a new topic for me and most of what i have told you ofcourse comes from the web!(except the part about the regolith and van allen belts!)..
You might find it interesting also to look up van allen belts surrounding planets that have magnetic fields and how they channelise the solar wind to the polar regions and drive the aurorae. That info is too available on the web.
Jayen