NASA's oxygen-generating experiment completes Mars mission

NASA's oxygen-generating experiment that accompanied the Perseverance rover has successfully completed its mission on Mars, and may enable future astronauts landing on the Red Planet to produce oxygen for fuel and breathing, the agency has announced. MOXIE served as the first-ever demonstration of technology that humans could use to survive on, and leave, the Red Planet.

Since Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021, MOXIE has generated a total of 122 grams of oxygen, equivalent to about what a small dog breathes in 10 hours. At its most efficient, MOXIE was able to produce 12 grams of oxygen an hour - twice as much as NASA's original goals for the instrument - at 98 per cent purity or better.

An oxygen-producing system could help future missions in various ways, but the most important of them would be as a source of rocket propellant, which would be required in industrial quantities to launch rockets with astronauts for their return trip home. Rather than bringing large quantities of oxygen with them to Mars, future astronauts could live off the land, using materials they find on the planet’s surface to survive. The next step would be to create a full-scale system that includes an oxygen generator like MOXIE and a way to liquefy and store that oxygen.

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