Gloucestershire company wins prize for inventing way to produce clean water on moon

Naicker Scientific wins 150,000 for device that produces drinking water from icy lunar soil

A 150,000 prize for a device that can produce clean water from icy lunar soil has been won by a pair of inventors whose solution involves a microwave oven, a motorised device for feeding woodchips into a barbecue and sound waves.

The 1.2m Aqualunar Challenge, funded by the UK Space Agency's international bilateral fund and split between Canadian-led and UK-led teams, is designed to encourage innovative solutions to the problem of producing drinking water from ice-rich regolith - rocks and dust - around the moon's south pole.