India’s space mission to search for trillion-dollar gas on moon

The moon has plenty of Helium-3 fuel source, which is a trillion-dollar gas that is very rare on Earth, and India is set to hunt for this gas with its upcoming moon mission.

India is planning to send a rover to the lunar surface on a mission to locate water and Helium-3 – a type of clean nuclear fuel worth trillions of dollars and is believed to fulfill the world’s energy needs for centuries.

India’s moon mission Chandrayaan-2 will be launched in October by the country’s space agency and will hunt for the priceless gas in the moon’s crust, reported Bloomberg. As explained by Fortune, Helium-3 is found on Earth but is extremely rare and pretty expensive to mine.

The moon, however, is believed to contain huge deposits of the gas and once it’s harnessed, it can meet the global energy needs for over 200 years. Scientists also believe that the waste-free gas could be used in a kind of nuclear fusion that doesn’t create radioactive waste.

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Experts predict that there is 1 million metric tons of the gas buried in the moon’s surface. They estimate that Helium-3 could be worth up to $10 billion a ton, which means around 250,000 tons would be worth trillions of dollars.

But, India is not the only country to search for the isotope. China has previously also chased Helium-3 beneath the lunar surface by putting a rover on the moon back in 2013 with its Chang’e mission. Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), K Sivan said, “The countries which have the capacity to bring that source from the moon to Earth will dictate the process.”

Chandrayaan-2 will be India’s first moon mission and includes an orbiter, lander and a rover. The vehicle is solar-powered and will collect readings for 14 days. The data will be transmitted from rover to land and in turn to ISRO for further analysis, wrote Deccan Chronicle.