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NASA NTRS · 20160010360

Martian Environment Electrostatic Precipitator

McDougall, Michael Owen
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Abstract

As part of the planned manned mission to Mars, NASA has noticed that shipping oxygen as a part of life support to keep the astronauts alive continuously is overly expensive, and impractical. As such, noting that the Martian atmosphere is 95.37% CO2, NASA chemists noted that one could obtain oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. The plan, as part of a larger ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) initiative, would extract water from the regolith, or the Martian soil which can be electrolyzed by solar panel produced voltage into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be used in the Sabatier reaction with carbon dioxide to produce methane and water producing a net reaction that does not lose water and outputs methane and oxygen for use as rocket fuel and breathing.

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McDougall, Michael Owen. 2016-08-05. Martian Environment Electrostatic Precipitator. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160010360

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