After landing on the surface of Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover took its first breath. Or rather, one of his instruments did.
Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a small instrument on the Perseverance Rover which is designed to transform carbon dioxide, which comprises 96% of atmosphere on mars, in breathable oxygen. Oxygen, of course, is crucial to human mission to Mars. Since February 2021, the device has operated seven times, each time producing about 0.2 ounces (6 grams) of oxygen per hour. This is on par with the abilities of the small trees here land.
“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body and chemically transforming them into something that would be useful for a human mission,” said MOXIE Deputy Principal Investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, professor of practice in the MIT Department. Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former NASA astronaut, he said in a statement. “It’s historic in that sense.”
Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover’s first year on Mars
MOXIE has now operated under various conditions March, both day and night, during the four seasons. Researchers hope that a version of the instrument roughly 100 times larger than MOXIE could create breathable oxygen for future astronauts visiting the Red Planet. If explorers can’t make their own oxygen on Mars, supplies from Earth would take up valuable mass in a spacecraft.
In addition, MOXIE products could also be used as an ingredient for rocket fuel, quite crucial to ensure that the mission is not one-way. A rocket would need 33 to 50 tons (30 to 45 metric tons) of liquid oxygen propellant to launch humans off Mars.
“We’ve learned an enormous amount that will inform future systems on a larger scale,” said Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE mission at MIT’s Haystack Observatory.
That of the team research was published Wednesday (Aug. 31) in the journal Science Advances.
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