Nasa successfully tested a new rocket that has the potential to collect its fuel from outer space.

While most NASA rockets are powered by either a combination of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, or solid chemicals, this rocket burns methane, a gas which can be harvested from Mars, Titan, Jupiter, and many other planets and moons in outer space.

“With fuel waiting at the destination, a rocket leaving Earth wouldn’t have to carry so much propellant, reducing the cost of a mission”, explains Nasa…

Mars and Titan…

Although Mars is not rich in methane, methane can be manufactured there via the Sabatier process.

On Saturn’s moon Titan, it is literally raining liquid methane. Titan is dotted with lakes and rivers of methane and other hydrocarbons that could one day serve as fuel depots.

Source : Nasa - Methane Blast

So why hasn’t this been done before?
The use of methane offers lots of advantages. The gas remains liquid at much warmer temperatures. On Earth, fuel tanks wouldn’t need as much insulation to protect the gas from exterior heat. This makes the fuel tank lighter.

The tanks could also be smaller, because liquid methane is denser than liquid hydrogen.

All in all, lighter and smaller tanks are cheaper to launch, …

But unlike traditional rockets, methane needs an ignition source to ignite. The colder it gets (outer space temperatures drop to hundreds of degrees below zero), the more difficult it is to guarantee ignition. Nasa scientists are working on that problem right now!


XCOR Aerospace’s XR-5M15 LOX methane engine for NASA