Water Electrolysis for Propulsion of a Crewed Mars Mission

Abstract

NASA’s Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 presents architecture options for a crewed Mars mission. This paper compares the cryogenic chemical-propulsion option in that study with an alternative: water-electrolysis propulsion. Propellant is stored as liquid water instead of cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen, and then electrolyzed on demand into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen for combustion. This addresses a technology gap in the reference architecture: cryogenic propellant storage life. Water is inert and stable, allowing indefinite storage. The mission refuels from pre-positioned tanks at a lunar libration point and Mars orbit, significantly reducing vehicle mass. Low-thrust transfers between Earth escape, Mars encounter, and vice versa reduce the need to store gas for impulsive maneuvers. Only relatively small impulsive maneuvers are used for orbit injection, escape, and plane changes. The proposed architecture achieves the same mission with at most the same number of launch vehicles and without cryogenic propellant storage. Both architectures use five superheavy lift launch vehicles; however, the reference architecture demands all five within 120 days. The alternative is more flexible. Pre-positioning propellant ahead of time allows a less demanding launch cadence. Potential utilization of water from the moon or elsewhere reduces the number of launches from five to as few as two.