New copper catalyst converts CO2 into pure methane fuel without added refining

By the Everything Space news desk · 15 Sep 2026 · written from the sources below

Image: Space.com

The nanoscale catalyst could let future Mars missions make rocket propellant directly from the planet's carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.

Researchers have developed a catalyst that converts carbon dioxide into methane pure enough to use as rocket propellant, potentially allowing astronauts on Mars to produce fuel for their return trip from local atmospheric gas.

The process relies on electrochemical reduction, in which an electric current drives a reaction inside a device called an electrolyzer. Water is split at one electrode while carbon dioxide is chemically altered at the other, eventually combining with hydrogen and oxygen atoms to form carbon-based compounds. The type of catalyst material determines which compounds result, with copper typically yielding a mixture of alcohols and methane.

The team, led by a chemical engineer at the University of Mississippi with collaborators including a mechanical engineering student at Texas A&M University, created a nitrogen-doped copper catalyst at the nanometer scale that produces methane with very high purity, avoiding the unwanted byproducts that have plagued earlier versions of this technique. That matters because separating out those byproducts normally requires bulky equipment unsuitable for a Mars mission where every kilogram of cargo is costly.

Mars is well suited to this approach since its thin atmosphere is overwhelmingly composed of carbon dioxide, offering an abundant local resource rather than requiring astronauts to transport fuel-making materials from Earth. Several rocket engines already in use or development, including SpaceX's Raptor engines for Starship, burn liquid methane paired with liquid oxygen, making the compound a practical target for in-situ production.

The researchers note the technology could also have applications on Earth, where it might generate methane from captured atmospheric carbon dioxide rather than through drilling for natural gas, potentially reducing dependence on fossil sources.

However, using the resulting methane as fuel would still release the carbon back into the atmosphere in a net-zero cycle rather than removing it permanently. The team says its longer-term goal is to move toward processes that lock carbon away rather than simply recycling it, though that capability is not yet developed.

The findings were detailed in a study published in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Written in Everything Space’s own words by our news-desk model from the sources above, and checked against them in code: every number in this report appears in its sources, and no sentence is copied from them.