Historic first for NASA’s Perseverance, produced for the first time oxygen on the planet Mars


Another historic first succeeded the robotic rover Perseverance on Mars, as a scientific instrument on the rover succeeded in producing oxygen for the first time, as announced by the American Space Agency (NASA).

This is the first time a spacecraft has produced oxygen on another planet, a milestone of great importance for future manned colonization missions, as underlined by AMPE. It is also another first for the Perseverance mission, following the successful first flight of a small robotic helicopter, the Ingenuity, to Mars on Monday.

The MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) instrument produced oxygen in the Jezero Martian crater by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into an important first step in producing on-site oxygen for either rocket fuel or .

– NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 21, 2021

Its sparse atmosphere Mars has infinitesimal oxygen and is 96% carbon dioxide, so it could quickly kill a person who breathes it. The MOXIE, which is the size of a toaster, absorbs Martian toxic air and separates -by an electrolysis process that develops a temperature of about 800 degrees Celsius- the carbon molecules from those of oxygen. It then eliminates the useless carbon and retains the valuable oxygen that can be used.

The first test produced about 5.4 grams of oxygen, “enough to keep an astronaut healthy for about ten minutes of normal activity,” according to NASA. MOXIE, at present, can produce about ten grams of oxygen per hour.

Of course, liquid oxygen rockets will need much larger quantities to be able to be launched from Mars. For example, launching four astronauts from the “red” planet would require about 7,000 kilograms of rocket fuel and 25,000 kilograms of oxygen.

One day, in the future, according to NASA, much larger MOXIE units capable of mass-producing oxygen may be sent to the neighboring planet before the first humans arrive.

NASA plans to produce oxygen about ten times during the mission of the six-wheeled Perseverance (which arrived on Mars this year on February 18 in search of traces of life), trying to do so at different times of the day, locations and temperatures.