section_path: Other projects/Space technology
section_name: Space technology
paragraph_text: Space technology
  
  NASA awarded $35 million to the company in 2023 for the company's work on lunar regolith to be used for solar powered systems on the moon. The company's website states that "Blue Alchemist is a proposed end-to-end, scalable, autonomous, and commercial solution that produces solar cells from lunar regolith, which is the dust and crushed rock abundant on the surface of the Moon. Based on a process called molten regolith electrolysis, the breakthrough would bootstrap unlimited electricity and power transmission cables anywhere on the surface of the Moon. This process also produces oxygen as a useful byproduct for propulsion and life support."
  
  Gary Lai, chief architect of the New Shepard rocket said during the pathfinder awards at the Seattle Museum of Flight that "aims to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the Moon to use here on Earth". He also mentioned that the company is building a novel approach to extract outer space's vast resources.