Life on Mars may be so possible, that NASA’s Moxie instrument has succeeded in producing oxygen on the Red Planet.
The instrument has created one of the critical components of human life for the first time ever, and Moxie has extracted oxygen on the fourth planet from the sun seven times since it made its first landing in February last year as part of NASA’s pre-probe mission.
The project will teach future systems on a “larger scale” to make a planet other than Earth habitable, said Michael Hecht, the principal investigator for the MOXIE mission at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, in a press release.
“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and chemically transforming them into something useful for a human mission,” said Jeffrey Hoffman, professor of practice in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The study observed how the small-sized instrument can produce oxygen through different atmospheric conditions, including day and night.
Hecht added that they cannot do the job during dusk or dawn as temperatures change dramatically.
“We have a great idea that allows us to do that, and once we test that in the lab, we can get to this latest milestone to show that we can really run at any time.”
Professor Hoffman also said: “The atmosphere of Mars is more diverse than that of Earth, the density of the air can vary by two times during the year, the temperature can vary by 100 degrees, and one of the goals is to show that we can run in all seasons.”
Experts pointed out that the longest time that astronauts can spend on the surface of Mars is 100 minutes currently, as researchers revealed their ability to carry 50 grams of oxygen.
Although the current version of the Moxie is small enough to fit into the persistence wagon, the researchers revealed that eventually, a large-scale oxygen plant would be needed to carry larger units of oxygen, ideally, these units would operate “continuously”.
They also noted that to adequately support humanity, “computers, space suits and habitats” must be brought from Earth.