How will future astronauts return from Earth March? According to a new study, they can produce rocket fuel from the methane already on the Red Planet.
Researchers have devised a new way to create rocket fuel on methane use that they hope will allow return flights from Mars. This method was previously theorized by Elon Musk and engineers at SpaceX who considered ways to convert carbon dioxide and water from ice on Mars to have the necessary carbon and hydrogen needed to create methane.
Theoretical astronauts can therefore in theory use this technique to change local Mars materials such as ice and carbon dioxide to make rocket for a return trip home. This new method is currently only a ‘proof of concept’, which means that it has only been tested in laboratories, but not in real conditions.
While “a lot of engineering and research is needed before it can be fully implemented,” Huolin Xin, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, who led the research, said in a statement. “But the results are very promising.”
Related: How life on Mars can challenge future astronauts (infographic)
To create this new method, the team used an existing two-step method to turn water into breathable oxygen International Space Station and made it into a one-step process. They did this by using a single-atom zinc catalyst.
“The zinc is fundamentally an excellent catalyst,” Xin said in the statement. “It has time, selectivity and portability – a big advantage for space travel.”
By reducing a two-step process to one step, it makes the mechanism more compact and portable, thus making it easier to transport to use on Mars, according to the statement.
This new method is atomically distributed zinc, which acts as a catalyst for the reaction, helping to create methane from carbon dioxide. The process, using this specialized catalyst, “converts CO2 efficiently into methane,” Xin said.
Many launch vehicles today do not use methane-powered rocket fuel, so this process must be compatible with future propulsion technologies. But methane-based fuel can have a number of advantages over liquid hydrogen fuel used by companies like Boeing and Lockheed. Liquid hydrogen fuel leaves carbon residues in rocket engines that need to be cleaned, something that would be difficult (not simply possible) on Mars, according to the same statement.
However, there are some companies already jumping on board to develop and use methane-based rocket fuel. SpaceX’s Starship’s Raptor engines, Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine and Firefly Alpha are all using fuel on methane.
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