Groundbreaking success for manned space flight to Mars

CO2 and CO sensor for oxygen production.

Micro-Hybrid IR emitters are also involved in the exciting NASA project of our customer smartGAS.

The Mars rover Perseverance used a special module to extract oxygen from the planet's extremely CO2-containing atmosphere.

CO and CO2 sensors of the FLOW^EVOseries from smartGAS monitor the gas concentration inside the module and thus control the process for O2 extraction. At the heart of these gas sensors are hermetically sealed infrared emitters of the JSIR 350 -HermeSEAL® series.

Volker Huelsekopf, Founder & Sales Manager SmartGAS is proud:

"With the help of Micro-Hybrid's hermetically sealed and particularly stable IR emitters, our gas sensor can deliver stable measurement results even after the long journey in space and the ambient conditions on the red planet."

This is made possible by the unique assembly and connection technology used in the manufacture of the particularly stable HermeSEAL® IR emitters. This allows the IR emitter to withstand severe stresses such as the enormous G-forces during rocket launch, extreme temperatures and atmospheric pressure conditions. The neutral gas atmosphere inside the IR emitter is maintained by the HermeSEAL® technology and the radiation output is thus stable over the long term and virtually drift-free.

"The successful establishment of oxygen production on Mars is a prerequisite for manned flights to the Red Planet. So far, they are not yet possible because the rocket would need more fuel for the return flight than it can transport. If, on the other hand, oxygen could be extracted from the Martian atmosphere, the rocket on Earth would only have to be refueled with part of the fuel for the return flight. Oxygen production on Mars would also allow astronauts to stay on the planet.

The gas sensors monitor the process inside the so-called MOXIE module (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), which splits oxygen atoms from CO2 compounds in the Martian atmosphere. If the experiments continue to be successful, a module about a hundred times larger will be used to produce oxygen permanently on Mars." (Quote www.samrtgas.eu)