Not all the experiments onboard NASA’sPerseveranceare there to study the Red Planet . MOXIE is there to test succeeding technology . It ’s the Mars Oxygen In - Situ Resource Utilization Experiment , and it is used to work a bit of the carbon dioxide - rich atmosphere of Mars into breathable oxygen . originally this month , it double itsmaximum turnout .
The wassailer - sized instrument is of course not changing the atm of the Red Planet importantly . It is not even on all the time , only when the scouter is not doing anything else that is of import . It ’s there just to shew that the engineering science is feasible and that a future , much bigger arrangement could be used to make oxygen for astronauts and for fuel .
The instrument has been carry 15 times since Perseverancelanded on Mars . In 2022 , it accumulated about 1,000 hour of operation . Given the good results , the team has been fight it more and more to see how well it can do , as well as testing it at unlike times and locations to see how the surroundings affect the machine .
For the streak perform on June 6 , MOXIE worked for 58 minute . The goal was to produce 6 grams of oxygen . It ended up producing 12 grams . An impressive result , above expectations for this eccentric of technical demonstration .
" We get majuscule results , " Michael Hecht , MOXIE ’s principal investigator and an associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ’s ( MIT ) Haystack Observatory in Westford , Massachusetts , toldSpace.com . " This was the risky discharge we ’ve done . This could have live on haywire . ”
MOXIE make oxygen by breaking apart the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere . First , the air is pulled in and filtered to take away dust and contamination . Then it is compact . The compressed air is charge through the Solid OXide Electrolyzer ( SOXE ) where an electrochemical chemical reaction break it into oxygen and carbon monoxide . A remainder of carbon can also be a byproduct , so the cognitive process require to be done cautiously .
There is less than one per centum O in the Martian atmosphere and MOXIE in its current form bring forth the oxygen tantamount to a medium - sized Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . A future mission will have a machine that is much big and running continuously , not just for an hour at a time , producing tens of dozens of atomic number 8 to make breathable air for cosmonaut as well as the amount necessary to fuel a rocket for the return key to Earth .
[ H / T : Space.com ]
