The 21st century man is very interested in space travel and the possibility of colonizing other planets in the solar system, including Mars. We are all well aware that we need oxygen to live, but only the Earth can meet this requirement of the human body.
What should we do to find ourselves living on Mars, for example? The answer to this question is simple and ingenious: experiment, think, and work hard. Inventors from China follow these rules. They are the ones who developed the unique robot chemist.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Synthesis, argues that on-site oxygen production is key to future missions to the Red Planet. Mars contains large amounts of water ice, which can be converted into oxygen and hydrogen if properly processed. However, this requires effective catalysts that can promote the decomposition of water molecules at low temperatures similar to those found on the planet.
Andy Cooper, a chemist at the University of Liverpool, notes that if you set a goal of flying and living on the Red Planet, you will have to work with local materials. Therefore, the logic in Chinese research is clear.
At the same time, Jun Jiang from the University of Science and Technology of China, located in Hefei, is actively promoting the results of his work internationally. He and his team created a robot equipped with artificial intelligence and a laser. A robot is a mobile machine that is the size of an average refrigerator and is equipped with a robotic arm. He analyzed 5 meteorites that were brought to Earth from Mars or found directly on our planet and imitated the Martian surface. The purpose of these actions was to determine the possibilities of the invention.
The AI-powered system used acid and alkali to dissolve and separate the material, then analyzed the resulting chemical compounds, which formed the basis for finding more than 3.7 million formulas for the right substances that could decompose the water known to exist on Mars in the form of ice and beneath the planet’s surface.
It is known that the best representatives of the scientific world would have spent about 2000 thousand years for such work, but the robot chemist made the necessary calculations much faster. Specifically, he built a predictive model, studied more than 50,000 articles on chemistry, and invented a promising catalyst formula within six weeks. A stress test at minus 37 degrees Celsius showed that the result could stably produce oxygen without deterioration.
According to Luo Yi, director of the National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Molecular Level, it is known that the AI robot can automatically develop new materials that will help produce oxygen and food, build bases on the planets of the solar system, and synthesize more chemicals from Martian resources to facilitate human space exploration.