NASA’s Perseverance Rover has produced 122 grams of oxygen on Mars. With this, history has been created by producing oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars.
The Perseverance Rover landed on the surface of Mars in the year 2021. The rover has also taken with it many instruments, one of which is MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment). Through this equipment, NASA created history by producing 122 grams of oxygen on Mars. A small dog will be able to breathe for 10 hours
This success can be effective in creating a colony on Mars in the future. Although this was just an experiment. According to NASA, the oxygen produced by MOXIE on Mars is enough to keep a small dog breathing for 10 hours.
The MOXIE instrument produces oxygen by separating one oxygen atom from each carbon dioxide atom present in the Mars atmosphere. NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said that the development of such technologies gives us the power to live longer and pursue human missions to places like the Moon and Mars.
NASA says that oxygen collected in this way can serve as breathing air for astronauts in the future. It can also be used to produce rocket propellant. If this happens, future missions to Mars may become more practical. Less fuel will need to be transported from Earth, most of the fuel will be available on Mars.
What is Perseverance Rover
Perseverance Rover is the remote controlled motor vehicle designed to explore Mars. The rover was the part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. The rover also carried a mini-helicopter “Ingenuity” to Mars. Ingenuity made first flight on mars on April 19, 2021. The objective of the Perseverance rover was finding the martian environments capable of supporting life, collecting rock and soil samples, finding existence of microbial life and testing oxygen production using MOXIE instrument.
What is MOXIE?
The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is an instrument developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. MOXIE instrument works by using an electrochemical process to separate one oxygen atom from each molecule of carbon dioxide in Mars thin atmosphere.
MOXIE can produce 6 grams of oxygen per hour. The maximum capacity of this instrument is 12 grams per hour.
The Perseverance Rover successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Since its landing it is still active on Mars.
The Rover was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a federally funded research and development center. JPL is owened by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).