Scientists say they have come up with potential way to make oxygen on Mars

CNN — In a high-stakes mission that could take five years to complete, NASA wants to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s. “What the authors are overlooking is that while the melting point might be - 70C, the frostpoint on Mars is also around -70C, so if these liquid brines did exist they would eventually just evaporate away.” Hecht said, one day, electrolysis of water would be important for fuel production on Mars but not necessarily in the way outlined in the paper. There also isn’t any reason not to melt the ice to get water, which can then be co-electrolyzed with CO2 to ultimately produce both oxygen and methane for fuel,” he said via email. “We aren’t funded by NASA or any space-related program, but our hope is that if we get sufficient traction with this work, then in future we hope to propose this as a complement to MOXIE and other systems.” “Our hope is in the next 10, 15 years we can advance our system to make it competitive.” Testing MOXIE The MOXIE team at NASA will study how the little, toaster-size version operates on the Perseverance rover and apply lessons learned for developing a larger and more powerful system for a crewed mission. Hecht said that NASA’s focus would remain on extracting oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere.