Scientists are developing an AI-powered robotic chemist to produce oxygen on Mars using Martian meteorites
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Sciences
by Iannis
2 days ago
TWC India
Representative image
(NASA/JPL-Caltech)
A team of Chinese scientists has developed a robotic artificial intelligence (AI)-chemistry that will help produce oxygen from water on Mars using meteorites from the Red Planet.
Lack of oxygen, essential for long-term survival, is one of the biggest obstacles humans will have to overcome to migrate to Mars. However, the recent discovery of water activity on Mars has shown promising results.
Scientists have discovered the possibility of decomposing water to produce oxygen through solar-driven electrochemical water oxidation with the help of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. The challenge is to find a way to manufacture these catalysts on site using materials found on Mars rather than transporting them from Earth, which is expensive.
To address this problem, a team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robotic chemist that can automatically synthesize and optimize OER catalysts from Martian meteorites.
“The AI chemist innovatively synthesizes the OER catalyst using a Martian material based on interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Professor Luo Yi, senior scientist on the team from USTC.
Their research was published in the journal Synthesis of nature.
An AI chemist has created an excellent catalyst using five types of Martian meteorites under unmanned conditions.
The stimulator can operate stably for more than 550,000 s with a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and an overpotential of 445.1 mV.
Testing on Mars at -37°C confirmed that the catalyst could produce oxygen stably without any obvious degradation.
Within two months, the AI chemist completed a complex catalyst optimization process that would take a human chemist 2,000 years.
“In the future, humans could set up an oxygen factory on Mars with the help of an AI chemist,” Jiang said. Only 15 hours of solar radiation are needed to produce the sufficient oxygen concentration needed for human survival.
He said, “This advanced technology brings us one step closer to achieving our dream of living on Mars.”
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