• Question: how is oxygen produced in space???

    Asked by bumblebee3004 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 10 Dec 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Winnard

      Andrew Winnard answered on 10 Dec 2015:

      You can use electrolysis to split water into oxygen to breath and hydrogen to fuel your rocket!

    • Photo: Simon Challis

      Simon Challis answered on 10 Dec 2015:

      Hey bumblebee3004!

      Andrew nailed it again! But a cool aspect of ISS operations right now is that NASA is running a system rack in the US LAB (Destiny) called OGA: Oxygen Generator Assembly. It uses electrolysis to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Currently the hydrogen is vented (so no rocket fuel 🙁 ) but the cool thing about the rack is that it uses waste water (collected condensate – essentially astronaut sweat! and urine) to generate the oxygen! The rack today has alot of technical issues since it is the first of its kind in space but in the future the descendent of this rack will probably be one of the standard system racks for a deep space mission to Mars and also on the Mars surface (to make that rocket fuel Andrew was talking about!)

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 11 Dec 2015:

      Outside of spacecraft, it is also made in stars! That’s how much of the oxygen on Earth got here – as nuclear waste from an ancient star that made it from hydrogen…

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