Future visitors to Mars will need oxygen not only to breathe but also to serve as rocket fuel. And since oxygen takes up valuable weight in a spacecraft, space mission planners are interested in the idea of ​​creating oxygen on Mars from raw Martian materials.

Two such scientists have proposed a method they believe could produce enough oxygen to launch a six-man spacecraft into Mars orbit.

The team’s newly proposed method also relies on electrolysis, like MOXIE, but has the potential to produce several hundred times more oxygen. Scientists say it will produce about 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of oxygen per hour if it works. This is how the mechanism is expected to work.

Carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere, whose molecules consist of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, will first be compressed and heated. This heated gas will then enter cells known as electrolysis cells, where electricity will pass through the heated carbon dioxide molecules, breaking down the oxygen atoms.

This oxygen content then escapes and cools down into a liquid. The heat of the oxygen is then sent back to heat the new gas entering the electrolysis cells. The authors estimate that if a hypothetical Martian crew operated this vehicle over the assumed typical mission of 14 months, or 420 sols, it would produce about 30 metric tons of oxygen, enough for these astronauts to escape from the Martian surface. gravity Source