How to make oxygen on the moon [View all]
Not a detailed scientific explanation, but an overview - including things like how the one sixth gravity affects how gases and liquids interact, so it's not straightforward:
Inside a giant sphere, the engineers pored over their equipment. Before them stood a silvery metal contraption swathed in colourful wires a box that they hope will one day make oxygen on the moon.
Once the team vacated the sphere, the experiment began. 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. A layer of it heated to temperatures above 1,650C. And, with the addition of some reactants, oxygen-containing molecules began to bubble out.
Weve tested everything we can on Earth now, says Brant White, a program manager at Sierra Space, a private company. The next step is going to the moon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7nr8wv5r9o
I suppose you could put a one-sixth-gravity centrifuge in Earth orbit to test things.