Murray Hunter
“Rocket science” can solve the world’s problems
The two biggest problems in advancing space travel past low Earth orbits is having enough breathable air and fuel for rocket propulsion. Experiments conducted by the crew of Shenzhou-19, in the Tiangong Space Station (Heavenly Palace) utilising the mimicking of the natural process of photosynthesis by plants to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose looks to have solved these two problems.
China has been working on this problem since 2015, according to a SCMP report. Researchers at the University of Illinois only perfected similar results on Earth in 2022, using the inefficient electrolysis technology method. The process was first emulated aboard the Tiangong space station (Heavenly Palace) just recently in a demonstration. This paves the way for a Chinese attempt of a manned moon landing in 2030.
The experiment took place inside a drawer-shaped device, utilising semiconductor catalysts to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, and ethylene, a hydrocarbon which can be used as a rocket and thruster fuel. The advantage of this process is that it requires little energy and can be undertaken in weightlessness. This is in contrast to the International Space Station (ISS), which uses more than a third of its total electricity production from solar panels to undertake its electrolysis to produce hydrogen and water.
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