They used an ordinary microwave oven to zap simulated lunar soil that had been cooled to moon-like temperatures of -150 °C.
Keeping the soil in a vacuum to simulate lunar conditions, they found that heating it to just -50 °C with microwaves made the water ice sublimate, or transform directly from solid to vapour. The vapour then diffused out from higher-pressure pores in the soil to the low-pressure vacuum above.
Extracting lunar water woudl use 100 times less energy as would be needed to extract hydrogen and oxygen from the lunar soil.
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