The friction and wear of mild steel at dry sliding surfaces under different vacuum conditions have been investigated to understand the wear mechanisms. For the test, a ball-ondisk typed wear-rig has been built and implemented, allowing control of sliding speed, load and vacuum. Results show that, at a high sliding velocity, friction of low carbon steel (SS41) under a high vacuum is much higher than that of ambient condition and wear is much severer. It is due to lack of effective oxidation film formation on which steel surfaces could protect themselves against the severe wear. It has been shown, however, that there is a critical regime with contact conditions (at a low sliding velocity, a low load, and under a medium vacuum) at which effective, protective films of low carbon steel have been built on the surfaces in a friction process with a self-regulating way, resulting in both very low coefficients of friction (about 0.3) and mild wear. In order to investigate the protective films on steel surfaces, the worn surfaces and the wear debris have been experimentally analyzed with SEM, AES/SAM and XRD. A theoretical analysis of frictional heating at sliding surfaces, and an experimental analysis of the influence of oxidation wear under various vacuum conditions are described. The important variables on which self-formations of protective films at dry sliding surfaces depend, and the wear mechanisms are also investigated.