Inside the belly of the Perseverance rover, currently exploring Mars’s Jezero Crater, is a small box with a big job: making oxygen.
Inside the belly of the Perseverance rover, currently exploring Mars’s Jezero Crater, is a small box with a big job. The Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE aims to produce oxygen from Mars’s abundant carbon dioxide, paving the way for providing resources for future crewed missions to the Red Planet.
In the summer of this year, MOXIE tested out its fastest production of oxygen to date, making more than 10 grams of oxygen per hour. The device works by taking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, using some electricity, and turning it into oxygen and carbon monoxide.
