NASA’s Mars rover makes oxygen on Mars for the first time

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay 

An unprecedented oxygen release, with the exception of a small amount of oxygen on Mars, was detected by a test device located in the center of Perseverance

NASA has added another planet for the first time in its recent mission to Mars: to convert carbon dioxide into pure Martian air and pure oxygen, says the U.S. Space Agency.

An unprecedented oxygen release, in fact, came out of Mars on Tuesday, completed on Tuesday with a test device mounted on Perseverance, a six-wheeled science robot landed on Red Planet on February 18 after a seven-month voyage from Earth.

In its first operation, a toaster-sized tool called MOXIE, short for the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, produced about 5 grams of oxygen, equivalent to about 10 minutes of respiration in space, NASA said. Although the first release was modest, the feat featured the first release of experimental natural resources from another planet's environment for direct human use.

"MOXIE is not just the first to produce oxygen from another planet," Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a statement. He called it the first technology of its kind to help in the next journey to "live on the earth" of another planet.
How does this work?

This tool works by electrolysis, which uses high temperatures to separate oxygen atoms from carbondioxide molecules, making up about 95% of the atmosphere in Mars.

The remaining 5% of Mars' atmosphere, roughly only 1% as Earth's crust, contains mainly molecular nitrogen and argon. Oxygen is present on Mars at random tracking rates.

But much discovery is considered essential for human experiments at the end of the Red Planet, as a stable source of atmospheric air and as a necessary ingredient for rocket fuel to fuel a home.