Australian researchers plan to utilize readily available elements on the Red Planet, such as air, soil, and sunlight, to produce iron.
Mars Surface Simulation. Photo: iStock
The research team, led by Professor Akbar Rhamdhani at Swinburne University, published the first detailed study on metal production on another planet in the September 2022 issue of Acta Astronautica, as reported by Phys.org on August 5. They focused on metal extraction on Mars. The researchers developed a process that utilizes Martian air, dust, and sunlight to create iron. This process employs concentrated solar energy as a heat source and carbon. Carbon is generated by cooling CO gas, a byproduct of oxygen production in the Martian atmosphere Mars.
The oxygen production experiment has already been tested on the Perseverance rover through the MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) device as part of NASA’s project. Consequently, the metal extraction process developed by the research team is intended to run concurrently with future oxygen production facilities. Oxygen and iron would be used for other human missions on the Red Planet. Transporting materials from Earth to space is extremely expensive, time-consuming, and harmful to the environment. Producing resources from another planet enables effective and sustainable development at a lower cost in space.
Rhamdhani’s team is collaborating with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to move to the next stage. “We aim to develop a metal extraction process on Mars, leveraging in-situ resources without the need to bring reactive materials from Earth. If we want to build large structures on Mars without launching everything from Earth (e.g., large satellites, Mars colonies, refueling stations, etc.), this could be a very beneficial process,” Rhamdhani shared.
