H-O Seminars| Virtual Planetary Exploration
Virtual Planetary Exploration
Electro-dye tool
Summary
NASA aims to find a new life on other planets, to do that they need cheaper and lighter exploration tools. to solve that we made called a handheld optical sensor to measure the oxygen and hydrogen rate. The water will pass by different processes as followsfiltering the water from other materials like magnesium, sodium, and calcium to contain only H2Oseparating oxygen atoms from hydrogen atoms by water electrolysispassing oxygen atoms through anode and cathode to provide the oxygen atoms with electrical impulses to ensure a uni-direction pathwaypassing them through the sensor which consists of LED to emit rays and photodiode to receive these rays and pass them through the tube until we ge
How We Addressed This Challenge
The primary purpose of the chosen challenge is to create a tool that helps astronauts discover new properties of the new planets they are going to discover.
Our project will help astronauts to discover the percentage of oxygen in the water on the water planets with a very simple tool and simple equations, thus they can also know if the percentage of oxygen in the water qualifies for the presence of marine creatures on it, so if an appropriate percentage is available, they can do the rest of the research that reveals About the existence of those being, Perhaps we finally discover a planet with aquatic life.
According to NASA resources the most planets don’t have a constant percent of hydrogen , and by measuring the oxygen percentage and some studied equations, we can calculate the hydrogen percentage and determine the percentage of change in it, so we will help astronauts discover new properties that will be very useful to them Easily and accurately.
How We Developed This Project
To determine the changing in hydrogen percentage, we need to develop a simple exploration tool that helps astronauts by detecting the percentage of oxygen and apply some simple equations.
In this case, separating Oxygen from water depends on the prosses called electrolysis of water.
Electrolysis, the process by which an electric current pass through a substance to produce a chemical change. A chemical change is a change in which a substance loses or gains an electron (oxidation or reduction). The process is performed in an electrolyte cell, which is a device consisting of positive and negative electrodes separated and dipped in a solution containing positive and negatively charged ions.
Pure water can conduct electricity because a small percentage of its molecules are broken down into ions. The ions formed in the water are hydrogen ions H + and the hydroxide ions OH-.
During the electrolysis of water:
OH- ions are attracted to the anode, lose electrons and form oxygen gas
To measure this Oxygen amount, we will pass this amount through an optical oxygen sensor consists of:
A light-emitting diode (LED)
An inert carrier that holds the photosensitive layer where the dye particles are integrated into a polymer matrix and protected by an optical insulating layer
photodiode filter to measure the emitted light.
The optical oxygen sensor quickly and reliably detects the amount of O2 in liquid or gaseous media.
To detect the changing in hydrogen percentage using a simple equation to use the rate of change from H2 in Earth's water (which is (rate 2 x o2) and H2 from water in the other planet, and we have proven that the same rate will be between H2 of the Earth's atmosphere (which is constant) and H2 of the atmosphere. On the other planet so that we can calculate the percentage of hydrogen on the other planet and by repeating these procedures we can calculate the rate of change.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Due to hydrogen gas’s importance, being the obvious gas for life to be consumed on Titan similar to the way we consume oxygen on earth - according to NASA’s article “What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?”-, our efforts started to be focused on hydrogen gas’s existence on the other planets.
According to the pdf file that NASA has published, titled “The Composition of Planetary Atmosphere”, it was found that many planets, such as Titan itself, have no exact hydrogen amounts due to its continuously changing. Here, the idea of detecting the amount in which hydrogen gas changes on other planets came up.
Based on JAXA’s resources, which have shown that they are searching for oceanic planets and the possibilities of having marine life, it was much clearer that a device which can measure the amount of oxygen in the water will be needed to determine if there are any possibilities to have aquatic life or not.
As NASA has announced in its article: “Breathing Easy on the Space Station”, that the primary source of oxygen for breathing will be water electrolysis, it has been deduced that water electrolysis mechanism would not be hard to be transferred with the astronauts to the other planets and would be a great starting step to detect the change in hydrogen due to its existence in both, water and atmosphere.
According to NASA’s article: “How NASA Goddard Test Tools Astronauts Will Use to Explore Distant Worlds”; the characteristics of the tools they usually use eliminated many suggestions about the device we will suggest and made it clear that we need an efficient, low-cost, simple, and small device to be constructed. That made it more obvious about the characteristics our tool has to meet.