Space.com reports: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) built Mars Oxygen Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) a small instrument at Perseverance rover designed to convert carbon dioxide, which makes up about 96% of the atmosphere on Mars, into breathable oxygen.
Oxygen, of course, is vital for a future human mission to Mars. As of February 2021, the device has operated seven times, each time producing about 0,2 ounces (6 grams) of oxygen per hour.
The ability of the tiny device to produce that specific amount of oxygen is on par with the abilities of small trees here on Earth.
MOXIE has operated under various conditions on Mars, day and night, and in all four seasons.
The researchers expect that a version of the instrument about 100 times larger than the current MOXIE could potentially generate oxygen for future astronauts visiting the Red Planet.
If explorers can't make their own oxygen on Mars, oxygen supplies from Earth would take up valuable mass in a spacecraft.
In addition, the oxygen from the MOXIE device could also be used as a rocket fuel component — very important to ensure that each mission is not a one-way trip. A missile it would take 33 to 50 tons of liquid oxygen propellant to launch humans from Mars.
“This is her first show realof using resources on the surface of another planetary body and converting them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission," said MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor at MIT.
