Making fuel and oxygen on Mars using plasma

• Autores: Andy Coghlan
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3149, 2017, pág. 10
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Future colonists on Mars could use plasma technology to make their own oxygen. The atmosphere on Mars is 96 per cent carbon dioxide, says Vasco Guerra at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. This can be split to extract breathable oxygen and carbon monoxide, a fuel that could give us a "gas station on the Red Planet," he says. He and his team calculate that creating a carbon dioxide plasma--a mush of ions made by passing an electric current through a gas--could split carbon dioxide from oxygen more easily on Mars than on Earth.