As mentioned, oxygen exists in lunar rock (regolith) and can be directly extracted. This would be done for many reasons, such as life support oxygen, propellant oxidizer, or even to facilitate plant growth. In samples of lunar material that have been tested, oxygen abundance is found to be between 42-45% by weight. Using lunar oxygen is important because of the high cost per kilogram of launching materials into space from Earth. There are many methods to extract oxygen that require a large amount of energy, but these still provide a cost savings in comparison. This cost savings provides the motivation to utilize in-situ oxygen resource utilization on the Moon, so that mission costs are lower and missions become more sustainable. A few tested methods to produce lunar oxygen include carbothermic reduction of regolith, hydrogen reduction of regolith, and molten regolith electrolysis.

In addition to oxygen in lunar rock, water is also known to exist in lunar permanently shadowed craters, many of which are found at the Moon’s South Pole. This water is found in the form of ices in the extremely cold temperatures found in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), which have been observed to reach as low as -238 C (-397 F). From current information, water presence is confirmed but quantity is highly varied. Information from the LCROSS mission in 2009 detected a water weight percentage of up to 5.6 ± 2.9% by mass. Following this, a 2018 paper that analyzed data collected from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) indicated many locations containing ice concentrations as high as 30% in the upper few millimeters of the surface of permanently shadowed regions. Many methods are being studied to extract Lunar water, such as using reflected sunlight or microwaves to melt ices.