European and American physicists have developed a plasma facility that allows extracting oxygen from carbon dioxide molecules present in the Martian atmosphere. This was reported by the press service of the American Physical Institute.

“We assumed that the collision of high-energy electrons with CO molecules₂ will lead to the decomposition of this substance or to the release of heat. This energy can also be used to break down carbon dioxide. Together with colleagues from France and the Netherlands, we were able to experimentally confirm these hypotheses.”, – said associate professor of the University of Lisbon (Portugal) Vasco Guerra.

In the past six years, at the suggestion of Elon Musk, scientists have begun to seriously think about how humanity can begin the process of colonizing Mars and other potentially habitable planets. To do this, as the researchers now suggest, two problems need to be solved: to learn how to produce energy, as well as oxygen, water and food, using local resources.

As Guerra and his colleagues note, oxygen production will be one of the most important and energy-intensive tasks that the first colonists on Mars will face. To solve it, scientists are developing systems that can extract oxygen from the Martian air and soil. One such facility, MOXIE, was installed aboard the Perseverance rover and successfully tested on Mars in April last year.

MOXIE absorbs carbon dioxide, heats it up to 800 degrees Celsius and passes it through a special ceramic material that breaks down CO₂ to oxygen (O₂) and carbon monoxide (CO). European physicists and their American colleagues have developed an alternative approach that markedly outperforms the MOXIE system in terms of compactness and oxygen production efficiency.

The installation created by scientists relies in its work on the fact that CO molecules₂ become much less stable if they are placed inside a rarefied plasma, the electrons inside of which have a much higher energy than ions and neutral molecules. In theory, this allows the splitting of CO₂ to carbon monoxide and oxygen if CO molecules₂ will often encounter electron beams with well-defined properties.

Guided by this idea, Guerra and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments during which they studied the interactions of oxygen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide inside an inhomogeneous plasma. These experiments helped scientists to choose such operating parameters, in which oxygen almost did not combine with carbon monoxide and did not form new CO molecules.₂.

As the researchers note, the production of oxygen using plasma does not require heating the Martian air to temperatures exceeding 30-40 degrees Celsius, as well as high pressure. In the future, this will significantly reduce the cost of energy and resources for the production of oxygen on Mars, the physicists summed up.

The fourth-generation navigation device Glonass-K2 will be launched at the end of the year. This was announced by the first deputy director general of Roscosmos for the development of the orbital constellation and promising projects, Alexander Ivanov.

“If we take the orbital constellation, the well-known constellation of the GLONASS system. The fourth-generation device Glonass-K2 is already being prepared for launch at the end of this year, Ivanov said at the Army-2022 forum.

The Information Satellite Systems named after M.F. Reshetnev reported that there are five Glonass-K satellites at different stages of production in the workshops of the enterprise. Unlike its predecessors, Glonass-K have an extended service life of up to 10 years and improved performance. In addition to the basic navigation functions, they are also capable of transmitting signals from the international COSPAS-SARSAT system for search and rescue of those in distress around the world. In October last year, Sergey Karutin, general designer of the GLONASS system, said that Glonass-K2 would provide navigation accuracy of less than 30 cm.

On the sidelines of the Army-2022 forum, Kaspersky Lab CEO Evgeny Kaspersky announced that the company is finalizing the functionality of its hack-proof mobile phone to work with critical infrastructure.

“We wrote everything from scratch, so we still need to finish it. Camera does not work. We do, but it takes time. Plus performance – there is still work to make it work at the same speed that we are used to. There are a lot of technical problems that we are slowly coping with. When we show it and say it’s ready, I don’t know“Kaspersky said.

According to him, the device will be something between a regular smartphone and a push-button phone. “However, we do not consider it as a replacement for a regular smartphone. Still, this is more for working with critical infrastructure. … Modernity requires that infrastructure can be managed remotely. Therefore, a device is required that will be guaranteed unhackable. Therefore, we are making a device that will have a fairly limited functionality. There will be no App Store, there will be no chips that everyone loves on smartphones, but it will be a thing that can be safely controlled by a conditional turbine“Kaspersky added.

For the first time, Kaspersky announced work on creating smartphones under its own brand with protection against hackers in December 2020, then it was assumed that they would appear in 2021.