A group of experts has found a way to extract oxygen on the Red Planet from local carbon dioxide.
An international team of researchers has developed a plasma approach to producing oxygen on Mars for future crews. Space.com reported it.
It was noted that there is a lot of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, but it is locked in carbon dioxide molecules, which are very difficult to destroy. And the oxygen that comes out of it must be separated from the gas mixture, which also contains, for example, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Experts from the University of Lisbon suggest that the plasma will help release oxygen, which will cause the molecule to vibrate and decay.
Plasma contains free particles, including electrons, which are light and accelerated to very high energy by electric fields.
“When bullet-like electrons hit a carbon dioxide molecule, they can directly decay it or transfer energy by vibrating it. This energy can be directed, in large part, to decay the carbon dioxide,” said Vasco Guerra, a physicist from the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
The researchers hope that this method can provide a high rate of oxygen production with a relatively small weight of the devices.
This approach could complement NASA’s In-Situ Oxygen Exploitation Experiment (MOXIE).
MOXIE takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turns it into oxygen and carbon monoxide, but for this to happen on a significant scale, such a device must consume large amounts of energy.
It was previously reported that Perseverance collected the 11th rock sample, which may contain information about whether there is life on Mars.
The Chinese spacecraft Tianwen-1 took pictures of the entire Mars
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Source: korrespondent
