How Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide Could Build a New World
Imagine a world where every breath of air, every drop of drinking water, and every gram of building material must be manufactured from a thin, alien atmosphere. This isn't science fiction—it's the stark reality awaiting the first human settlers on Mars. The Red Planet presents humanity with its greatest logistical challenge: how to survive and thrive millions of miles from Earth's abundant resources.
The solution may lie in two simple molecules: hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
While Mars lacks the ready-made resources of Earth, its atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide (CO₂), and its soil contains water ice and minerals. The emerging science of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) focuses on transforming these local materials into life-supporting commodities. Through sophisticated chemical processes, hydrogen and carbon monoxide extracted from Martian environments could become the fundamental building blocks for everything from rocket fuel to plastics, pharmaceuticals to structural materials. This isn't merely chemistry—it's the key to unlocking a sustainable human future beyond Earth.
To understand how we might build industry on Mars, we must first appreciate the unique properties of these two molecular workhorses. Hydrogen (H₂) is the universe's simplest molecule and a powerful reducing agent, meaning it can strip oxygen away from metal oxides in Martian soil to release valuable metals and water. Though not abundant in Mars' atmosphere, hydrogen can be extracted from water ice present in the planet's regolith or synthesized through complex electrochemical processes.
Carbon monoxide (CO), once considered merely a deadly poison on Earth, becomes a valuable industrial feedstock on Mars. Through well-established chemical processes like the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, carbon monoxide can be combined with hydrogen to create hydrocarbon chains of various lengths—producing everything from methane fuel for return journeys to Earth to long-chain hydrocarbons for manufacturing plastics and synthetic materials.
What makes these processes particularly viable on Mars is the abundant availability of their starting material: carbon dioxide. The Martian atmosphere consists of approximately 95% CO₂, providing an essentially unlimited raw material for these transformations. The challenge isn't availability—it's processing, and that's where cutting-edge science enters the picture.
Evidence that Mars may already perform its own version of this chemistry comes from an unexpected source: Martian meteorites that have traveled to Earth. Scientific analysis of meteorites like Tissint, Nakhla, and NWA 1950 has revealed that interactions among spinel-group minerals, sulfides, and brines can enable the electrochemical reduction of aqueous CO₂ to organic molecules .
Discovered in 2011 in Morocco, this meteorite provided crucial evidence of Martian organic chemistry.
Fell in Egypt in 1911, one of the first meteorites confirmed to be from Mars.
Found in Northwest Africa, containing important mineralogical evidence.
In the Tissint meteorite, researchers discovered macromolecular carbon phases intricately associated with minerals like titano-magnetite and pyrrhotite. These carbon structures were found within cracks in the minerals, suggesting they formed through fluid-mineral interactions in the Martian crust. Even more compelling, hydrogen isotope analysis confirmed that the hydrogen associated with these carbon phases originated from Martian crustal sources rather than terrestrial contamination .
While nature's process occurs over geological timescales, human survival requires faster results. Recently, a Chinese research team from Nanjing University and Fudan University has made a breakthrough that could accelerate our timeline for Mars colonization. They've developed an electrochemical device that directly splits CO₂ into elemental carbon and oxygen—with remarkable efficiency 1 .
The researchers created a specialized reactor consisting of several key components:
The entry point for CO₂, equipped with a nanoscale cocatalyst made of ruthenium and cobalt (RuCo) to facilitate the reaction.
Serves as the "mediator" in the process, similar to how hydrogen functions in plant photosynthesis but more efficient.
First, CO₂ reacts with lithium to form lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃), which then further reacts to produce lithium oxide (Li₂O) and elemental carbon.
The lithium oxide is then converted to lithium ions and oxygen gas (O₂), completing the cycle 1 .
| Parameter | Specification |
|---|---|
| Temperature | Moderate/Ambient |
| Pressure | Not stringent |
| CO₂ Source | Various mixtures tested |
| Catalyst | RuCo nanoscale |
| Power Source | Renewable (theoretical) |
The experimental results were striking. The optimized RuCo catalyst achieved an oxygen yield of over 98.6%—significantly more efficient than natural photosynthesis 1 . Perhaps even more impressive was the system's versatility. The researchers tested it not only with pure CO₂ but with various gas mixtures, including a simulated Martian atmosphere containing only 1% CO₂ in an argon base 1 .
This last point is particularly crucial for Martian applications. While Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO₂, its surface pressure is less than 1% of Earth's, making efficient processing of thin atmospheric gases essential for practical applications.
The implications of this research extend far beyond the laboratory. This single process could simultaneously address multiple challenges of Martian habitation: producing breathable oxygen for life support, generating pure carbon for manufacturing, and potentially creating valuable carbon compounds for other uses.
Building a chemical industry on Mars requires carefully selecting which materials to transport from Earth and which to manufacture locally. Here's a look at the essential "research reagent solutions" that would form the basis of Martian material processing:
Facilitates efficient CO₂ splitting at nano-scale
Must be importedServes as mediator in electrochemical CO₂ reduction
Possibly extractableSource of metals, minerals, and adsorbed gases
Abundantly availablePrimary feedstock for carbon/oxygen production
95% of atmosphereThe strategic approach involves what researchers call in-situ resource utilization—using what's already available on Mars to minimize what must be transported from Earth. Studies have demonstrated that carbothermic reduction using carbon produced from atmospheric CO₂ can extract metal alloys from Martian soil simulants 2 . This process could provide the iron, aluminum, and other structural metals needed for construction and manufacturing.
The vision emerging from laboratories worldwide is both ambitious and inspiring: rather than shipping every necessity from Earth, we can establish self-sustaining chemical industries on Mars that transform native resources into life-supporting commodities. The processes we've explored—turning atmospheric CO₂ into oxygen and carbon, then combining these with hydrogen from water ice to create fuels and materials—represent more than technical achievements. They're the foundation for what could become a thriving Martian civilization.
Recent workshops dedicated to Mars terraforming and settlement have shifted from speculative fantasy to concrete planning. As noted in the 2024 terraforming workshop, with modern technologies including Starship and synthetic biology, we may see a "Green Mars" in our lifetime—not fully Earth-like, but supporting a thriving global biosphere within protected environments 4 .
The scientific breakthroughs in using hydrogen and carbon monoxide for material processing on Mars thus represent more than isolated innovations. They're interconnected pieces of a larger puzzle—the puzzle of how humanity becomes a multi-planetary species. Each reaction vessel that efficiently splits CO₂, each new catalyst that improves efficiency, and each experiment that confirms the feasibility of using local resources brings us closer to the day when the Red Planet becomes a second home.
"This kind of research is essential for scaling up carbon removal and reuse technologies."
On Mars, that scaling up may ultimately mean the difference between survival and prosperity, between a precarious outpost and a sustainable civilization.
The chemistry is complex, but the vision is simple: to make Mars live, we must learn to build with the atoms it already provides.