Wringing water out of the Martian atmosphere to make rocket propellant for a return voyage to Earth may sound like the stuff of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. However, like the dwarf who helped the miller’s daughter become queen by spinning straw into gold, scientists are conducting research that someday may make space-refueling stations, and the possibility of interplanetary travel, a reality for all of us. Using a technology known as in situ resource utilization, or ISRU, researchers are studying ways to mine natural resources on other planets. Their efforts could greatly reduce the cost to visit, and eventually live in, space. Current projects include efforts to produce rocket propellants from water in the air, and to mine aluminum for a special antenna that could collect solar energy and convert it into electricity for manufacturing on another planet.
Life on Mars? The answer might just be in Arkansas The Christian Science Monitor
Biology professor Tim Kral won’t argue with anyone if they call his fascination with Mars an obsession. He loves the Red Planet, with its average temperature of -60 degrees C and atmosphere that’s 95 percent carbon dioxide. In Professor Kral’s office at the University of Arkansas, Martian figurines sit on shelves next to books about scientific topics that most people wouldn’t even know how to pronounce. “I have always been interested in the search for life out there,” Kral says. And that search is what keeps him occupied at the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Science, which opened last month in Fayetteville. The center’s main tool for planetary study will be the Andromeda chamber, which, when it’s fully assembled in the coming months, will allow researchers and students to simulate the conditions of planets, comets, and asteroids.