Vasco Guerra at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and his colleagues have shown that plasma can be made to vibrate in such a way that it separates carbon dioxide into its components − carbon and oxygen − in a process that could allow humans to breathe in Mars.
“Mars has very good natural conditions for the production of oxygen using plasma technology,” Guerra said.
Last year, a microwave-size device attached to Nasa's Perseverance rover was able to convert carbon dioxide into 10 minutes of breathable oxygen using the agency’s Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). In its first activation, the MOXIE instrument produced about 5g of oxygen, equivalent to roughly 10 minutes’ worth of breathing for an astronaut, Nasa said.
Since then, scientists have been looking for ways to produce more breathing air in the Red Planet, whose atmosphere is made from 95 per cent carbon dioxide.
MOXIE uses high pressures and temperatures to separate...