A NASA device known as MOXIE onboard the Perseverance Rover produced enough oxygen for an astronaut to breathe for 10 minutes, a major step toward manned missions to Mars.
On Earth Day, there’s some big news from Mars: NASA reports that its Perseverance rover has made breathable oxygen out of Martian air, a pivotal step toward manned missions to the red planet. The device responsible for the feat is called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), which is the size of a toaster, weighing about 38 pounds on Earth and a slim 14 on Mars. By superheating carbon dioxide to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit to split it on a chemical level, MOXIE can produce up to ten grams of oxygen per hour in the lab; this week, it managed to pump out about five grams, which is enough for an astronaut to breathe for ten minutes, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
