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.

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.

New research that harnessed the power of artificial intelligence has identified the specific crater on Mars that ejected the ancient Black Beauty meteorite. The researchers named the Mars crater after the Australian city of Karratha, which is home to one of the oldest terrestrial rocks. The discovery offers never-known details about the Martian meteorite NWA 7034, nicknamed'Black Beauty,' which was found in Africa in 2011, according to researchers. 'For the first time, we know the geological context of the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth,' says Dr. Anthony Lagain. 'For the first time, we know the geological context of the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth, 10 years before the NASA's Mars Sample Return mission is set to send back samples collected by the Perseverance rover currently exploring the Jezero crater,' lead author Dr. Anthony Lagain, from Curtin University's Space Science and Technology Center in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, says in a statement.

New Curtin-led research has pinpointed the exact home of the oldest and most famous Martian meteorite for the first time ever, offering critical geological clues about the earliest origins of Mars. Using a multidisciplinary approach involving a machine learning algorithm, the new research – published today in Nature Communications – identified the particular crater on Mars that ejected the so-called'Black Beauty' meteorite, weighing 320 grams, and paired stones, which were first reported as being found in northern Africa in 2011. The researchers have named the specific Mars crater after the Pilbara city of Karratha, located more than 1500km north of Perth in Western Australia, which is home to one of the oldest terrestrial rocks. Lead author Dr Anthony Lagain, from Curtin's Space Science and Technology Centre in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the exciting discovery offered never-before-known details about the Martian meteorite NWA 7034, known as'Black Beauty', which is widely studied across the globe. Beauty is the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth, meaning it contains angular fragments of multiple rock types cemented together which is different from all other Martian meteorites that contain single rock types.

Scientists have revealed more about the origins of the famous'Black Beauty' meteorite, also known as NWA 7034. The researchers used AI to analyse thousands of high-resolution planetary images of the Martian surface from a range of Mars missions. They found Black Beauty was ejected into space when an asteroid impacted the planet's surface and created the six-mile-wide Karratha Crater 5-10 million years ago. Black Beauty, which weighs just 11 ounces (320 grams), led to the creation of a new class of meteorite when it was discovered in 2011 in the Western Sahara Desert. The meteorite was ejected from Mars' Karratha Crater 5-10 million years ago by an asteroid impact Five to ten million years ago an asteroid smashed into Mars.