Day and night, and across seasons, the instrument reliably generates breathable oxygen from the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere. Nearly 100 million miles from Earth, on the red and dusty surface of Mars, an instrument the size of a lunchbox is proving it can reliably do the work of a small tree.
Science Advances,
Scientists envision that a scaled-up version of MOXIE could be sent to Mars ahead of a human mission, where it could continuously produce oxygen at the rate of several hundred trees. At that capacity, the system should produce enough oxygen to sustain humans after they arrive, and also fuel a rocket for returning astronauts back to Earth.
“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” says MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of the practice in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “It’s historic in that sense.”
MOXIE will collect carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and electrochemically split the it into oxygen and carbon monoxide molecules. Credit: NASA/JPL. MOXIE then measures this output for quantity and purity before releasing it harmlessly back into the air, along with carbon monoxide and other atmospheric gases.
So far, MOXIE has demonstrated that it can make oxygen at almost any time of the Martian day and year. They will also monitor the system for indications of wear and tear. Since MOXIE is just one experiment among several aboard the Perseverance rover, it cannot run continuously as a full-scale system would. Instead, the instrument must start up and shut down with each run. This causes thermal stress that can degrade the system over time.
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