Experimental NASA device designed to generate oxygen on Mars

NASA and SpaceX aim for the greatest achievement in the history of the space exploration program: the mission to Mars. This mission is difficult but not impossible considering the technological developments. But the main problem will be the creation of a human colony on Mars, which has an atmosphere 100 times thinner than Earth and only 0.16% oxygen. But it appears NASA has a solution.

Mars has 95% CO2, 2.6% molecular nitrogen, 1.9% argon, 0.16% oxygen and 0.06% carbon monoxide. Hence, it is clear that the Red Planet is highly dominated by greenhouse gases. But NASA’s Perseverance Rover has a device on board called the MOXIE that will convert the available air on the planet into oxygen.

MOXIE can be helpful

This device is being tested and if the technology could produce oxygen on a larger scale, it could help humans breathe on Mars and also be useful for rocket fuel. NASA knows the hard part would be getting people off the planet and back to Earth.

To get humans off the Martian surface, 55,000 pounds of oxygen would be required to produce the thrust of 15,000 pounds of rocket fuel. Instead of sending all the oxygen required by Earth, the scientists want to allow the Mars mission crew to create rocket fuel on the Red Planet with the help of MOXIE – Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment – which is a first generation oxygen Generator.

However, MOXIE is a completely separate experiment from the primary science mission of the Mars rover Perseverance. While the rover’s primary job is recovering rock samples that can be returned to Earth, MOXIE focuses on the engineering needed for future exploration efforts.

Michael Hecht of MIT, the principal investigator of the MOXIE device, said that being able to produce oxygen on Mars would make the first manned mission to the Red Planet easier, safer and cheaper. The device is capable of sucking air using a pump and then using an electrochemical process, it can separate two oxygen atoms from each carbon dioxide molecule.

Asad Aboobaker, a MOXIE systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said, “MOXIE is designed to produce 6 to 10 grams of oxygen per hour, just enough for a small dog to breathe. . to produce (propellant for the return flight) it would be necessary to increase the production of oxygen by about 200 times compared to what MOXIE will create “.