AI Robot Chemist Discovers Oxygen-Making Molecule on Mars
An AI-powered robot chemist has synthesized compounds from Martian meteorites that could be used to generate oxygen from water on Mars. The robot used a laser to scan the ore and calculated over 3.7 million molecules it could make from the metallic elements in the rocks. Within six weeks, the AI chemist selected, synthesized, and tested 243 different molecules, finding a catalyst that could split water at the cold temperatures found on Mars. The researchers estimate that it would have taken a human scientist around 2,000 years to find the same catalyst using conventional methods.