To build anything on the Moon, a mineral found in Greenland is needed, so NASA, ESA, and universities across the world are buying more and more of it. Lumina, the mining company who extracts it, now hopes that the lunar research will raise demands for the mineral.
If you look at the moon on a dark night (or in the photo above), you will notice two distinct shades of gray.
The dark patch is the so-called ‘lunar maria’, a remnant of ancient lava flows, while the light patch, which covers 83 percent of the Moon’s surface, is lunar highlands.
Contrary to popular belief, these highlands are not made of green cheese, but rather a chemical composite known as anorthosite. Until recently, this was just an obscure fun-fact, but since NASA started its Artemis program in 2017, a program with a goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon, interest in anorthosite has increased.
And how is this related to Greenland?
It is because of lunar soil samples brought back to Earth by Neil Armstrong and the Apollo Programme some 55 years ago. Analysis of these samples, 382 kilograms worth of lunar rock and soil, shows that no other known deposits of anorthosite are more like the lunar anorthosite than the one found in a mine in the Kangerlussuaq Fjord in West Greenland.
“Unlike on the Moon, all anorthosite on Earth contains some amount of oxygen, and the composition of the mineral varies depending on where on Earth you find it,” Bent Olsvig Jensen, managing director of Lumina who operates the Kangerlussuaq mine, told Polar Journal AG.
“Anorthosite is also being extracted in Canada, Norway, and Finland, but ESA [the European Space Agency] has taken samples from all these places and concluded that our anorthosite is the one that resembles the Moon the most. That is why we have started a collaboration with them,” Bent Olsvig Jensen said.
Sold at 100 times the price
Originally, Lumina started extracting anorthosite for reasons unrelated to the Moon.
Their business model, Bent Olsvig Jensen explained, is based on its usefulness in the global transition into sustainable energy. Some materials, materials like glass fiber, can be made using anorthosite rather than less sustainable alternatives.
But slowly, when in 2018 they started selling anorthosite to customers across the world, Lumina discovered that it was being resold at high profit margins. The new prices were sometimes 100 times higher than what Lumina had first sold their anorthosite for, and the buyer was usually NASA.
“We would have been bad business people if we didn’t decide to cut-out the middleman at that point,” Bent Olsvig Jensen said.
And so they did.
First, around 2021, they started selling to individual scientists who got in touch with them directly, and in 2023, they struck up a deal with ESA for a regular delivery of anorthosite. Currently, negotiations with NASA for a similar arrangement are ongoing.
ESA, NASA and a range of different universities are all collaborating on a shared ambition of building a base on the moon, and in this work anorthosite is needed for a number of different research projects.
For instance, Bent Olsvig Jensen revealed, ESA is working on a project in Cologne, Germany, where they will build a 1:1 version of a possible moonbase. All anorthosite for this project will be delivered from Greenland.
Hoping to learn from lunar methods
Lumina has a license to extract 285.000 metric tonnes of anorthosite per year, but only a tiny fraction of that currently goes to Moon-related projects. It is still very much a niche area, Bent Olsvig Jensen explained.
The reasons that they are still investing time and energy in the Moon collaborations are more long-term.
“If a moonbase is to be built, there will need to be construction work on the Moon. All the materials needed for this work cannot be brought there in rockets but will need to be made by minerals that are already there. And the most common Moon mineral is anorthosite” he said.
It is with this in mind that Lumina is betting on the Moon. Not because they hope to contribute to this construction work – there is plenty of anorthosite on the Moon – nor because they hope to make much money from Moon research.
Instead, the Greenlandic mining company wants lunar construction methods to become so cheap that they will also be viable on Earth.
“If NASA and ESA figures out an effective way to use anorthosite for cement or other building materials, it might also suddenly become a much more valuable material here on Earth. That’s what we’re hoping for,” Bent Olsvig Jensen said. NASA’s Artemis program has a goal of establishing a permanent base on the moon before 2040.
“I hadn’t realized how soon these plans were scheduled to take place,” Bent Olsvig Jensen, who is now selling anorthosite to NASA, said.
Ole Ellekrog, Polar Journal AG
More on the topic:
