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NASA successfully generates oxygen on Mars

SimpliCity News Team · 18 Sept 2023

NASA’s Perseverance rover has done the unthinkable. Or, at least, a small device on the rover has. According to a tweet and article shared by NASA’s Perseverance team on Twitter, a device known only as MOXIE has proven that we can generate oxygen on Mars using the planet’s CO2-concentrated atmosphere.

This tech is a huge boon, and the success of this story could help pave the way for future oxygen generation on the Red Planet, something that would make long-term exploration of the planet far more feasible.

MOXIE, which is actually known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, has shown that it can generate oxygen on Mars 16 times in a row, the report claims. Further, NASA says that over the past two years, as this mission has been carried out, the little device has generated enough oxygen for a small dog to breathe for 10 hours.

While that isn’t nearly enough oxygen for explorers to start running around freely on the planet, it is a nice bit of progress that could be expanded on in the future, to create more effective oxygen generation systems on the Red Planet.

NASA oxygen on Mars Red Planet CO2-concentrated atmosphere MOXIE

NASA successfully generates oxygen on Mars

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