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The floating, sticky dust, technically known as lunar regolith, also made it tough to see during landing or during surface activities; for example, the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969 repeatedly tripped over an external TV cable obscured in powder.

Along with colleagues, Palak Patel, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with an experimental molten regolith electrolysis system, for extracting oxygen and metal from the lunar soil.

Ms Patel says that future resource-extracting machines on the moon could derive iron, titanium or lithium from regolith, for example.

The usefulness of lunar regolith does not stop there.

Ms Patel notes that, in separate experiments, she has melted simulated regolith into a tough, dark, glass-like material.