One big problem of landing on Mars? Fuel to go back to Earth.

Author: Brandon A. Weber / Source: Big Think

• It’s a problem that NASA scientists are working on because the weight of the fuel it would take to travel both to and from the Red Planet is immense.
• What they’re proposing now would actually gather fuel from water in the Mars soil.
• Once that’s extracted, then it’s fairly simple to separate out hydrogen.
  When that is combined with carbon from the atmosphere … Voila! Methane.

Scientists at NASA are working on a bit of alchemy that would greatly improve the chances of a mission headed there of actually returning. Otherwise, we’d have one of those desperately sad situations like in old science fiction movies where astronauts are simply stuck on the planet with no way to return.

The problem is this: Hauling fuel to Mars so that the return flight back to Earth actually succeeds is not just inefficient, but it would also take up a ton of precious cargo space. In…

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