Making metals from Martian dirt. ⛏️ It's too expensive to send tonnes of metals to Mars to fuel human exploration. So how will we get the metals we need? Working with Swinburne University of Technology, we've successfully extracted iron in Mars-like conditions, using simulated Martian dirt (called regolith). Martian metals could be used to build the habitats and equipment we need to explore the red planet. | CSIRO