How to make metals from Martian dirt

Summary

27 August 2025 3 min read Key points Swinburne and CSIRO researchers are investigating ways to produce native metals using materials found on Mars. Martian settlements will require large amounts of metal that are difficult to ship from Earth. The team have successfully produced iron using regolith simulant that mimics what is available on the Red Planet. The idea of building settlements on Mars is a popular goal of billionaires, space agencies and interplanetary enthusiasts. But construction demands materials, and we can't ship it all from Earth: it cost US$243 million just to send NASA's one tonne Perseverance Rover to the Red Planet. Unless we're building a settlement for ants, we'll need much, much more stuff. So how do we get it there? CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellow and Swinburne alum Dr Deddy Nababan has been pondering this question for years. His answer lies in the Martian dirt, known as regolith. "Sending metals to Mars from Earth might be feasible, but it's not economical. Can you imagine bringing tonnes of metals to Mars? It's just not practical," Dr Nababan says. "Instead, we can use what's available on Mars. It's called in-situ resource utilisation, or ISRU." More specifically, Dr Nababan is looking at astrometallurgy — making metals in space. Building an off-world foundry As it turns out, Mars has all the ingredients needed to make native metals. This includes iron-rich oxides in regolith and carbon from its thin atmosphere, which acts as a reducing agent. Swinburne University of Technology astrometallurgist, Professor Akbar Rhamdhani, is working with Dr Nababan to test this process with regolith simulant - an artificial recreation of the stuff found of Mars. "We picked a simulant with very similar properties to that found at Gale Crater on Mars and processed them on Earth with simulated Mars conditions. This gives us a good idea of how the process would perform off-world," he says. The researchers used a regolith simulant that mimics the materials found at G...