Quantitative sampling and thermal extraction of the lunar regolith for lunar volatile exploration: Method and validation

Water and other volatiles are present in the permanently shadowed region of the moon. Quantitative analysis of the content is of great significance for lunar resource assessment and geological evolution. However, no detector has yet carried out in situ analysis on the moon, and quantitative sampling and low-power thermal extraction of lunar regolith are also difficult. Thus, a systematic method is proposed to realize quantitative sampling & low power thermal extraction of lunar regolith that detects the abundances of volatiles more accurately. Considering the requirements of the amount and particle size of the regolith, a sampler with a specific structure and motions is designed to quantitatively collect some lunar regolith. After that, induction heating is applied to heat the sampler and indirectly increase the temperature of the internal lunar regolith for volatile thermal extraction. The results demonstrate that this sampling method can achieve high-quality quantitative sampling. Moreover, the sampler and sampled regolith can be heated to the desired temperature with low power consumption. This work offers a feasible solution for the lunar volatile exploration of Chang’E-7.