Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation

Canada’s mining sector brainstorms lunar resource extraction

Canada’s mining sector brainstorms lunar resource extraction

The prevalent plan is to extract water from the fine dust deposits found in the moon’s north and south poles and separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would be used as fuel to allow space travel beyond the moon, while the oxygen would be utilized to sustain life. At the moon’s north pole alone, an estimated 60 million tonnes of water is available for extraction. “If we convert all of that water into shuttle fuel, we could launch a shuttle per day for more than 2,000 years, just with the water that’s at the north pole,” said Dale Boucher, ISRU and Space Mining Consultant. “There’s a lot of water on the moon. It’s not as dry as we thought it would be.” 

Sudbury researchers begin to tackle mining on the moon

Sudbury researchers begin to tackle mining on the moon

Meanwhile, China has successfully landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, and samples brought back from its 2020 mission have revealed a new source of water that could be used in future explorations. “Water was embedded in tiny glass beads in the lunar dirt where meteorite impacts occur,” according to a recent Associated Press story. While mining these beads might be a challenge and their water content is minuscule, they do exist in vast numbers and could yield a substantial amount of H20.

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