The atmosphere on Mars doesn’t support human life, so if humanity is going to travel to – and survive – on the red planet, we’ll need to pack our space rockets with everything needed to support life. That will be a heavy load, so it’s no surprise that space agencies are looking to develop life-support technologies and renewable fuel production that are lightweight and regenerative.
This makes photoelectrochemical cells, which convert solar energy to produce oxygen while simultaneously releasing hydrogen for fuel, an attractive option. Now, solar-fuel researchers in California and Germany have demonstrated a semiconductor half-cell that, unlike conventional designs, efficiently releases hydrogen in microgravity conditions.
“We wanted to figure out if we can actually do photochemistry in microgravity and produce fuels,” says first author Katharina Brinkert from the California Institute of Technology. But testing and designing a cell that’s capable of working under zero-gravity conditions proved quite the challenge.
To read more, click here.