After six human missions between 1969 and 1972, it became clear that the layer of dust and rock, called regolith, was more than just a pretty surface feature.

It has the texture of sandpaper of the consistency of snow and sticks to anything it can: space suits, rocks, fingers, and the inside of the Apollo command modules.

It’s also highly toxic: although Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan described a scent like “spent gunpowder,” you definitely wouldn’t want to breathe it.

That hasn’t stopped Kevin Grossman, a materials’ scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and the head of a team developing a device that will melt Lunar regolith and turn it into breathable oxygen.

As all NASA projects do, Grossman’s venture has a marvelous name – GaLORE: the Gaseous Lunar Oxygen from Regolith Electrolysis project.