More than 150 million kilometers from Earth, an instrument called MOXIE aboard the Perseverance rover has produced about 100 minutes of breathable oxygen. The rate of production is comparable to what a small tree produces on our planet. The achievement represents an important step towards future manned missions to Mars.
The Mars In Situ Oxygen Resource Utilization Experiment is better known as MOXIE. The goal of this instrument is to demonstrate a way that future explorers could produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellants and for breathing. MOXIE is the size of a car battery. Future oxygen generators supporting human missions to Mars will need to be about 100 times larger.
In a study recently published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers report that, since the rover’s landing in February 2021, MOXIE was able to produce oxygen seven times throughout the Martian year. The instrument was conducted in a variety of atmospheric conditions, including day and night, and through different Martian seasons. In each of the tests, the instrument met its goal of producing six grams of oxygen per hour, about the rate of a small tree on Earth.
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance took this selfie near the rock nicknamed “Rochette,” found on the floor of Jezero Crater, on September 10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS).
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NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance took this selfie near the rock nicknamed “Rochette,” found on the floor of Jezero Crater, on September 10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS).
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As we mentioned earlier, in the future scientists hope to make an enlarged version of MOXIE for use on Mars during human missions, so that it continuously produces oxygen at the rate of several hundred trees. The final instrument is expected to supply enough breathable oxygen for humans once they arrive and also fuel a rocket to return astronauts to Earth.
“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 in a statement MOXIE Associate Principal Investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of MOXIE in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The atmosphere of Mars is much more variable than that of Earth. Air density can vary by a factor of two throughout the year, and temperature can vary by 100 degrees. One of the objectives is to show that we can run in all seasons.”
How does MOXY work?
MOXIE breathes like a tree. It produces oxygen by inhaling carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen. See what this innovative instrument does step by step:
- It sucks in the Martian air through a filter that cleans it of contaminants.
- The air is then pressurized and sent through the Solid Oxide Electrolyzer (SOXE), an instrument developed and built by OxEon Energy, which electrochemically splits carbon dioxide-rich air into oxygen and carbon monoxide ions.
- Oxygen ions are isolated and recombined to form breathable molecular oxygen (O2).
- Finally, the quantity and purity of O2 is measured by MOXIE before it is released harmlessly back into the air, along with carbon monoxide and other atmospheric gases.
What is relevant is that MOXIE has shown that it can reliably and efficiently convert Mars’ atmosphere into breathable oxygen useful for future missions. Humans want to secure manned missions to Mars, even establish colonies on the red planet, and this is a big step toward that goal.
The findings appear in the journal Science Advances.
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