Astronauts could use plasma to make oxygen and fertiliser on Mars
A kind of issue called plasma, which incorporates billed particles, could help crack up the Martian ambiance into more helpful factors
Room
16 August 2022
Blasting molecules apart with a soup of billed particles could help astronauts produce oxygen and other critical sources from the carbon dioxide-wealthy Martian environment.
Vasco Guerra at the College of Lisbon, Portugal, and his colleagues have demonstrated that plasma, a gas-like point out of make any difference built from charged particles, can be produced to vibrate in these a way that it separates carbon dioxide into its constituent carbon and oxygen. By combining this with a filtering membrane, astronauts could use the system to make oxygen on Mars, says Guerra. “Mars has really very good all-natural circumstances for the manufacturing of oxygen employing plasma technological innovation,” he claims.
There is currently an oxygen-manufacturing machine on Mars: NASA’s Mars Oxygen In-Situ Source Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), which is mounted on the Perseverance rover. It utilizes substantial pressures and temperatures to independent carbon dioxide, and then a membrane designed from stabilised zirconium to filter out the oxygen. A equivalent membrane could be employed with plasma, says Guerra, which he says would be a lot more productive and a lot easier to accomplish on the Martian area than MOXIE’s energy-pushed technique.
Guerra and his team’s operate represents an vital maturation of plasma systems, states Michael Hecht at the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering, who oversees the MOXIE challenge. But it is not likely to exceed MOXIE’s performance ranges simply because MOXIE is by now functioning at shut to the theoretical limits for oxygen creation, suggests Hecht.
Nevertheless, the plasma can be fine-tuned to vibrate at different molecular frequencies, letting it to individual other molecules and deliver resources that MOXIE can not, these types of as nitrogen and nitric oxide. “There’s other procedures, these kinds of as earning nitrogen and NO for fertilisers and points like that, where plasma is a great deal additional flexible,” states Hecht.
The technologies is nevertheless some way off remaining prepared for Mars. Guerra and his team hope to develop a prototype in the up coming pair of a long time, with a spacebound mission to adhere to once the technology has been tested to get the job done.
Journal reference: Journal of Utilized Physics, DOI: 10.1063/5.0098011
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A kind of issue called plasma, which incorporates billed particles, could help crack up the Martian ambiance into more helpful factors
Room
16 August 2022
Blasting molecules apart with a soup of billed particles could help astronauts produce oxygen and other critical sources from the carbon dioxide-wealthy Martian environment.
Vasco Guerra at the College of Lisbon, Portugal, and his colleagues have demonstrated that plasma, a gas-like point out of make any difference built from charged particles, can be produced to vibrate in these a way that it separates carbon dioxide into its constituent carbon and oxygen. By combining this with a filtering membrane, astronauts could use the system to make oxygen on Mars, says Guerra. “Mars has really very good all-natural circumstances for the manufacturing of oxygen employing plasma technological innovation,” he claims.
There is currently an oxygen-manufacturing machine on Mars: NASA’s Mars Oxygen In-Situ Source Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), which is mounted on the Perseverance rover. It utilizes substantial pressures and temperatures to independent carbon dioxide, and then a membrane designed from stabilised zirconium to filter out the oxygen. A equivalent membrane could be employed with plasma, says Guerra, which he says would be a lot more productive and a lot easier to accomplish on the Martian area than MOXIE’s energy-pushed technique.
Guerra and his team’s operate represents an vital maturation of plasma systems, states Michael Hecht at the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering, who oversees the MOXIE challenge. But it is not likely to exceed MOXIE’s performance ranges simply because MOXIE is by now functioning at shut to the theoretical limits for oxygen creation, suggests Hecht.
Nevertheless, the plasma can be fine-tuned to vibrate at different molecular frequencies, letting it to individual other molecules and deliver resources that MOXIE can not, these types of as nitrogen and nitric oxide. “There’s other procedures, these kinds of as earning nitrogen and NO for fertilisers and points like that, where plasma is a great deal additional flexible,” states Hecht.
The technologies is nevertheless some way off remaining prepared for Mars. Guerra and his team hope to develop a prototype in the up coming pair of a long time, with a spacebound mission to adhere to once the technology has been tested to get the job done.
Journal reference: Journal of Utilized Physics, DOI: 10.1063/5.0098011
Indication up to our free Launchpad e-newsletter for a voyage across the galaxy and beyond, each Friday
Far more on these subject areas: