NASA says its Perseverance Mars Exploration Rover has generated oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a key step toward future human exploration of Mars.
The Mars Exploration Rover’s toaster-sized Mars Oxygen In Situ Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument generated about 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour, which could meet the oxygen needs of an astronaut for about 10 minutes, the space agency said Monday.
The Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment is routinely designed to produce up to 10 grams of oxygen in an hour, the space agency said.
The Martian Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, like the Ingenuity helicopter brought to Mars with the Perseverance rover, is a part of the Exploration Space Agency, the agency said. Like the Ingenuity helicopter that was brought to Mars along with the Trail rover, it is an “exploration technology investigation”, that is, it is designed to experiment with a certain technology. If successful, this technology will be used for future, larger scale missions to Mars.
Jim Reuter, head of NASA’s Space Science and Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), said the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment has more testing to do, but initial results show that there is a lot of potential to achieve the goal of getting humans to Mars someday.
Oxygen is also an important component of rocket propulsion, and future Mars exploration missions must produce oxygen on Mars before they can return to Earth, Roet said.
The Martian Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment works to separate oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules by heating them to 800 degrees Celsius, the space agency said. The Martian atmosphere is 96 percent carbon dioxide.
The space agency said the hypothetical future mission would require the production of about a ton of oxygen for four astronauts to live and work on Mars for a year. Making the propellant needed to get them back to Earth would require about 25 tons of oxygen.
Meeting these needs would require the construction of a larger and more powerful Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MIRUE) facility weighing about a ton, the space agency said.
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