NASA’s perseverance turns carbon dioxide from Mars into oxygen

An instrument attached to the Perseverance Spacecraft that arrived on Mars in February after NASA launched it Convert carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into oxygenThe US Space Agency has reported that this is the first time this has happened on another planet.

“This is a critical first step in converting carbon dioxide into oxygen on Mars,” he said. Jim Reuter, Associate Director of NASA’s Space Technology Mission.

In this way, the tool’s first task Moxie (An acronym for Experimenting Using Oxygenated Mars Resources in situ) Successfully achieved.

MOXIE, a golden box the size of a car battery, It produced 5.4 grams of oxygen After heating for about 2 hours, it is enough Keep an astronaut for 10 minutes. In the future, the operation could also prevent the transfer of large amounts of oxygen from Earth for use as propellant for missiles on the return trip.

In this sense, the engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Michael Hecht It claimed that a one-ton version of MOXIE could produce approximately 55,000 pounds (25 tons) of Oxygen needed to launch a Mars missile.

The engineers at MOXIE – which are designed to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour – will conduct further tests and try to increase its performance.

The persevering rover landed on the Red Planet on February 18th on the To Look for signs of microbial life. Its miniature helicopter also made history this week with its maiden flight to another planet. The same spacecraft recorded Mars sounds live for the first time.