Robotic chemist discovers how to make oxygen from Martian minerals

A robotic chemist working autonomously in a lab has developed an oxygen-producing catalyst from minerals found in Martian meteorites. The same procedure could one day be used to provide oxygen for astronauts on Mars. Sending supplies to a future Martian colony by spacecraft would be extremely expensive, which makes producing materials with Mars's natural resources an appealing option. But this can be difficult because there are fewer available elements on Mars than on Earth. Yi Luo at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues have developed a fully automated robot chemist.