(Photo Courtesy:
NASA/JPL)
NASA's
Perseverance rover turns a tiny bit of Mars air into breathable oxygen
Using an
instrument called MOXIE, it produced about five grams of oxygen.
While the ultimate
goal of Perseverance is to look for signs of ancient life on Mars, that
hasn't stopped the rover from doing other scientific work. On April 20th,
Perseverance successfully pulled carbon dioxide from the planet's
atmosphere and converted it into oxygen, NASA announced on Wednesday. Along
with a family portrait of its robotic siblings, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab
fitted the rover with an instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource
Utilization Experiment or MOXIE for short.
The toaster-sized
tool allowed Perseverance to separate oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide
molecules by heating the gas at approximately 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit and
creating carbon monoxide as a byproduct. During the instrument's first
test, it produced about five grams of oxygen or about enough to give a lone
astronaut approximately 10 minutes of breathable air in their suit.
According to NASA, the experiment's success paves the way for future
missions, particularly those involving human astronauts as both people and
the rockets that will carry them to and from the Red Planet need oxygen to
operate. The way NASA puts it, a single rocket carrying four astronauts
will need about 55,000 pounds of oxygen to get off the ground. It's not
feasible to transport that much oxygen to Mars. That's where future
versions of the technology can help make exploring the planet viable.
The successful
experiment follows another historic first for Perseverance and NASA.
Earlier this week, the agency flew an aircraft on another planet when it
completed the Ingenuity Mars helicopter's first test flight. Like MOXIE,
Ingenuity is mainly a proof of concept, but it opens the door for future
aircraft to explore the Red Planet.
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