During the Perseverance mission, MOXIE extracted oxygen from the Martian atmosphere 16 times, testing a way future astronauts could produce propellant for return trips to Earth
When the first astronauts they will land on Mars, they may have the breakthroughs of a device the size of a microwave to thank. The reason? It could be the key to solving the problem of oxygen on Mars and propellant for the return journey. That device is called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), and it generated oxygen on Mars aboard the Perseverance rover.
The MOXIE experiment
“MOXIE’s performance demonstrates that it is possible to extract oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere. It could help provide breathing air or rocket fuel to future astronauts.”said Pam Melroy, the deputy administrator of NASA. “The development of technologies that allow us to use resources Of Mars is critical to building a long-term lunar presence. It will allow us to support a first human exploration campaign on Mars”.
Since Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021, MOXIE has generated a total of 122 grams of oxygen, about as much as it breathes a small dog in 10 hours. At full capacity, MOXIE was able to produce 12 grams of oxygen per hour – double NASA’s original goals – with 98% purity. MOXIE successfully completed all of its experiments and was used in a variety of conditions during an entire Martian year, allowing the instrument’s developers to learn a great deal about its technology. MOXIE produces molecular oxygen through an electrochemical process that separates the oxygen atom from each molecule of carbon dioxide pumped from Mars’ thin atmosphere. As these gases flow through the system, they are analyzed for purity and the amount of oxygen produced.
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