2023-11-22 22:49:19
Is humanity’s fantasy of ‘advancing to Mars’ getting closer to reality? Recently, we heard some interesting news from China. Scientists in China have developed an artificial intelligence robot that creates a catalyst for oxygen production using Martian meteorites. This opens the possibility of procuring oxygen, the first condition for human survival, on Mars. A robot chemist developed by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China is said to have succeeded in “predicting the most optimal combination of elements for an oxygen production catalyst by analyzing the chemical components of five Martian meteorites using a high-power laser” in just two months of research. Martian meteorites contain a lot of six elements, including iron, nickel, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, and manganese, and it is said that there are more than 3.76 million ways to combine them. This is easy to say, but if a person were to calculate this, it would take one researcher as many as 2,000 years of research for five hours at a time. This news was recently announced through a paper published in the scientific journal ‘Nature Synesis’ by Dr. Jun Zhang’s team at the University of Science and Technology of China. A robot chemist has created a catalyst that can stably produce oxygen without deteriorating performance for a long period of time at minus 37 degrees Celsius, the temperature on Mars. In addition to sustaining human life, oxygen is also needed to burn fuel in rocket propellants. Since a significant amount of oxygen must be consumed in the Martian atmosphere, solving this was the first problem that had to be solved in humanity’s advance to Mars. Source = Nature Synthesis However, there were two technical difficulties in creating a catalyst for oxygen production. According to the paper, the first is that “since the vast astronomical distances impede real-time remote research by humans, there must be unmanned and automated research facilities.” The second is that “there must be the scientific intelligence necessary to efficiently identify the best formulation of catalyst components through artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.” All of this is possible because there has been rapid progress in recent ‘artificial intelligence-robot’ technology. In their paper, the research team said, “Using field resources on Mars will be applied to substantially reduce the cost and complexity of human missions, and will enable sustainable exploration by utilizing local resources to produce the necessary materials.” Yes. The reason such a robot chemist was actually developed was because there was a prerequisite that “it would be possible to produce oxygen from water, especially as evidence of the existence of water was recently discovered on Mars.” So, how did we discover evidence that water may have existed on Mars? This is an achievement achieved by another robot, ‘Curiosity’. Curiosity is a Mars exploration robot created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Last September, it found traces of water flowing on Mars in Gale Crater on Mars. As a result of analyzing the data transmitted by Curiosity, a research team at Pennsylvania State University said, “We are discovering evidence that Mars may have been a planet made of rivers (in the past).” This means that most of the craters on Mars may once have been habitable rivers. The research team announced that they obtained these results by training a computer model using satellite data, images sent by Curiosity, and 3D scans of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor, a rock layer deposited over millions of years. “We discovered that common crater formations, referred to as ‘bench-and-nose terrain,’ are likely remnants of ancient riverbeds,” the research team said in a statement. In other words, this is a possibility that was discovered as a result of simulating the erosion process on Mars over thousands of years. There is a memorable part of this statement. “This analysis is a record of change.” The photos sent by rovers like Curiosity are not just a snapshot or “a landscape frozen in time,” but “remnants of active geological history.” Whether humanity can actually go to Mars or not, it seems certain that the robots accompanying humanity’s space exploration are satisfying humans’ intellectual desire to know regarding the universe. writing. Byline Network<남혜현 기자> smilla@byline.network
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