Researchers in China have developed a robot chemist powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that might be able to extract oxygen from water on Mars. The robot uses materials found on the red planet to produce catalysts that break down water, releasing oxygen. The study, published in Nature Synthesis 1, was led by Jun Jiang at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. Jiang and his team used a mobile machine the size of a refrigerator with a robotic arm to analyze five meteorites that had either come from Mars or been collected on Earth but mimicked the Martian surface. The team’s goal was to investigate whether the machine could produce useful catalysts from the material. The AI-powered system used acid and alkali to dissolve and separate the material, then analyzed the resulting compounds. “We have developed a robotic AI system that has a chemical brain,” says Jiang. We think our machine can make use of compounds in Martian ores without human guidance.