Sustainable Living on Mars: Remediation of Martian Soil to Produce Oxygen

Our project has two main themes: 1) the extraction, purification and concentration of ClO4 from Martian soil, and 2) the bioconversion of ClO4 to oxygen using genetically engineered E. coli. These themes and others are covered more thoroughly under “Lab Notes”. ClO4 is highly soluble in water. We are testing the idea that ClO4 can be highly enriched and concentrated inexpensively using activated charcoal, as previously shown for a similar compound [4]. For O2 production, we plan to synthesize and express the genes from the soil bacterium that are responsible for ClO4 breakdown, Ideonella dechloratans, [3] into the bacterium E. coli. We have also developed a method for the recycling of Martian colony biowaste into a highly enriched media for bacterial growth.