NASA offers $ 1 million for sugar production on Mars | News and reviews

If you're interested in chemistry, long distance travel, and you really want to keep Matt Damon alive on Mars, and you do not mind receiving $ 750,000 to make sugar, NASA offers you an offer !

Finally, we will end up sending more rovers to Mars, but to get there, there are a lot of problems to solve first. Matt Damon may have survived on the red planet thanks to ingenuity and potatoes, but it was a Hollywood reality. NASA is working in reality and is asking for help to determine how to allow humans to live on Mars.

Earlier this month, NASA launched the challenge of CO2 conversion. The space agency wants individuals or teams of people to help determine how to convert CO2, which is abundant on Mars, into glucose (a simple sugar). If a new synthesis solution can be perfected, it paves the way for microbial bioreactors, a realistic option on the red planet. These reactors can then produce a variety of products essential to our survival.

NASA is rising to the challenge with cold and hard money split into two phases. The first phase is to register no later than January 24, 2019 at 5:00 pm at the Center and submit your idea / application no later than 5:00 pm at the Center on February 23, 2019. Once all applications have been reviewed, five finalists will be nominated. choose. in April 2019.

Phase two is where things get serious. The finalists and all other promising ideas that will appear will have to be built and demonstrated. Since NASA has allocated a million dollars in total, this means that the price of an idea could reach $ 750,000. However, NASA thinks two or three ideas will work on Mars, so the money will eventually be divided.

I suspect that anyone interested in taking up this challenge is not really interested in the money, but in the problem they want to solve. Being able to say that you have helped humans survive on Mars is also a good thing to have written on your resume.

If you have not yet figured it out, the winner or winners of the challenge will also help us on Earth. You may have noticed that we are facing a growing problem with CO2 and that we could really find ways to get rid of it. Turning it into sugar seems like a fantastic way to do it!