Chinese space scientists are working out how future astronauts on Mars could make their own fuel out of thin air, a sign that Beijing is serious about one day sending people to the red planet.
A team at the state-funded Deep Space Exploration Laboratory in Hefei has developed a catalyst that turns carbon dioxide – which makes up more than 95 per cent of the Martian atmosphere – into a liquid fuel called methanol.
“Methanol can serve as fuel to generate electricity, provide heating and power Mars rovers, and it can also be used as a chemical building block for making antifreeze, building materials and other products,” space resources scientist Zhang Zhe and his colleagues wrote in a paper published online in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration.