NASA is increasingly interested in Mars, and in recent weeks has figured out how to produce fuel on the Red Planet: is it another step toward colonization? We explain everything to you in these articles.
Always among scientists, engineers, astrophysicists, and professionals in general, one of the biggest problems when considering trips to Mars is Find your way back. In fact, it is not easy to be able to fly Huge amount of fuel Valid for both the outer flight and the return flight, due to the enormous distances between Earth and Mars.
NASA is ready to produce fuel on Mars: this is what it is made of
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process among others It will also cost billions of dollars Since today the only solution is to produce fuel on our planet and transport it precisely on Mars so that we can bring back the astronauts. The currently assumed solution is to power the missiles with methane and liquid oxygen, It will cost well to transport about 30 tons of this material 8 billion dollars The stratospheric figure is also for NASA, which is undoubtedly the richest space agency in the world. That is why scientists are trying to find alternative fuels: “It appeared Alternative method — writes Esquire — which can not only produce methane and liquid oxygen from Mars resources but generate excess oxygen for astronauts.” In short, it should be He brought two microbes to Mars, Cyanobacteria that use sunlight to make sugars through photosynthesis, after removing carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere, and water taken from the ice. Instead, the genetically modified Escherichia coli bacteria ferment the sugars into a rocket propellant called 2,3-butanediol, which is currently used on Earth to make rubber.
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say words Peralta-Yahya A biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, comments on the discovery. She then added, “We’re starting to think of ways to exploit the planet’s low gravity and lack of oxygen to find solutions that have nothing to do with launches on Earth.” Nick Kreuer, Another Georgia Institute of Technology researcher added, “CO₂ is one of the only resources available on Mars, and biology is well suited to converting Co₂ into rocket fuel products.” Matthew Rilf He also added a researcher on the team working on this biofuel: “We also need to do experiments to show that cyanobacteria can grow under Martian conditions, because the difference in the solar spectrum on Mars, both in relation to the distance from the Sun and because of the lack of atmospheric filtration of sunlight with With high levels of ultraviolet radiation, they can damage cyanobacteria.”
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