NASA wants to make rocket fuel from a Martian soil

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Humanity builds powerful rockets like the SpaceX BFR launch system and NASA's space launch system, capable of carrying a payload away from the Earth. However, making the return trip means that you have to lug a lot more fuel with you. Efforts to send humans to Mars in the coming decades would be favored if we could manufacture gasoline on the red planet. It may be more feasible than we thought. NASA team leader Kurt Leucht explained how the agency could use Martian soil to produce the fuel that astronauts need to get home after a mission.

According to Leucht, it is better to do everything you can on the spot because of the inevitable realities of physics. The "transmission ratio" for Mars is 226: 1, which means that every kilogram of material sent requires a rocket to burn 225 kilograms of fuel. This is true for all materials – water, food, scientific equipment, people and even fuel for the return trip. With payloads being so expensive, it makes sense to produce everything you can on Mars. This is called in situ resource utilization (ISRU).

If you are determined to make fuel on Mars, you will want to find a source of water. Molecules of water contain hydrogen and oxygen, which you can split into fuel. You will not find many large pieces of ice on Mars (the poles are mostly carbon dioxide ice), but the soil may contain more than enough. Under the dusty surface layer, many areas of Mars have significant water deposits. Leucht notes that low-latitude gypsum sand dunes contain about 8% water.

NASA describes the fuel fabrication process from the Martian "push dust" regolith and is working on robots that can do most of the work before humans land on Mars. The Regolith Advanced Surface Systems (RASSOR) operating robot uses two opposed bucket drums with multiple excavation spoons to collect materials as the wheels move the robot forward slowly. NASA has designed RASSOR to operate in a low gravity environment – the drums rotate in the opposite direction to negate the core of the digging force.

The collection of the Regolith is only a beginning. NASA plans to build an autonomous chemical refinery capable of treating the soil to extract water and split it with the help of an electrolyzer in hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is useful for human breathing in addition to rocket fuel. In both cases, it can be stored in liquid form. Liquid hydrogen is harder to store, but NASA plans to turn it into liquid methane until needed. Mars' atmosphere is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, which should be a good source of carbon needed.

NASA demonstrated several parts of this system on Earth using a simulated Martian regolith. The agency estimates that the dusty system should produce 7 tons of liquid methane and about 22 tons of liquid oxygen in 16 months to be viable. Scientists still need to identify the best landing areas and refine the machines to find out if it is possible to reach these goals with current technology, but ISRU is where the l? Mars exploration of NASA moves. According to NASA, it is currently impossible to structure the planet Mars for $ 20 per kilo, and most Martian dust is probably from a single geological formation