Chinese scientists create powerful catalyst to turn air on Mars into rocket fuel

Chinese space scientists are working out how future astronauts on Mars could make their own fuel out of thin air, a sign that Beijing is serious about one day sending people to the red planet.

A team at the state-funded Deep Space Exploration Laboratory in Hefei has developed a catalyst that turns carbon dioxide – which makes up more than 95 per cent of the Martian atmosphere – into a liquid fuel called methanol.

“Methanol can serve as fuel to generate electricity, provide heating and power Mars rovers, and it can also be used as a chemical building block for making antifreeze, building materials and other products,” space resources scientist Zhang Zhe and his colleagues wrote in a paper published online in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration.