NASA’S Perseverance rover just notched another first on Mars, one that may help pave the way for astronauts to explore the Red Planet someday.The rover successfully used its MOXIE instrument to generate oxygen from the thin,carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere for the first time,demonstrating technology that could both help astronauts breathe and help propel the rocket that get them back home to the Earth.
The MOXIE milestone occurred on Tuesday (April 20),just one day after Perseverance watched over another epic Martian the First Mars Flight Of NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter,which rode to the Red Planeton the rover’s belly.”This is the critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,”Jim Reuter ,associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate said in a statement today (April 21).”MOXIE has more work to do but the result from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing human on Mars.
Making Mars Oxygen
- The toaster-sized MOXIE (short for ”Mars oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment”) produces oxygen from carbon dioxide , expelling carbon monoxide as waste product .The conversion process occurs at temperature around 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit ( 800 degrees celsius), so MOXIE is made of heat-tolerant material and features a thin gold coating to keep potentially damaging heat from radiating outward into Perseverance’s body.