The descendants of a microwave oven-sized device may be to thank when the first astronauts land on Mars for the air they breathe and the rocket propellant that gets them home.
On NASA’s Perseverance rover, this apparatus, known as MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), has produced oxygen for the 16th and final time. After the instrument demonstrated definitely more effective than its makers at the Massachusetts Establishment of Innovation (MIT) expected, its activities are closing.
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy stated, “MOXIE’s impressive performance shows that it is possible to extract oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere.” Oxygen could aid in the supply of breathable air or rocket propellant for future astronauts. It is essential to develop technologies that enable us to utilize resources on Mars and the Moon in order to establish a robust lunar economy, support a first human exploration mission to Mars, and establish a long-term lunar presence.
MOXIE has produced a total of 122 grams of oxygen since Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021, or about what a small dog breathes in ten hours. MOXIE was able to produce 12 grams of oxygen per hour at 98% purity or better at its highest efficiency, which was twice as much as NASA’s initial goals for the instrument.
On August 7, during its 16th run, the instrument produced 9.8 grams of oxygen. During a full year on Mars, MOXIE met all of its technical requirements and was used in a variety of conditions, allowing the instrument’s creators to learn a lot about technology.
Innovative Technology for Future Explorations
“We’re proud to have supported a breakthrough technology like MOXIE that could turn local resources into useful products for future exploration missions,” said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations, Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, which funds the MOXIE demonstration. “By proving this technology in real-world conditions, we’ve come one step closer to a future in which astronauts ‘live off the land’ on the Red Planet.”
MOXIE uses an electrochemical process to separate one oxygen atom from each molecule of carbon dioxide pumped in from Mars’ thin atmosphere to produce molecular oxygen. Analyses are performed on these gases as they move through the system to determine the quantity and purity of the oxygen produced.
Pioneering Use of Martian Resources
While many of Perseverance’s experiments are addressing the primary scientific objectives of the mission, MOXIE was focused on human exploration in the future. The first demonstration of technology that humans could use to both live on and leave the Red Planet was MOXIE. Future missions might benefit from an oxygen-producing system in a number of ways, the most significant of which would be as a source of rocket propellant, which astronauts would need in large quantities to launch rockets with on their way back home.
As opposed to carrying enormous amounts of oxygen with them to Mars, future space explorers could live off the land, utilizing materials they find in the world’s surface to make due. In-situ resource utilization, or ISRU, is a concept that has developed into a growing field of study.
“MOXIE has clearly served as inspiration to the ISRU community,” said the instrument’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht of MIT. “It showed NASA is willing to invest in these kinds of future technologies. And it has been a flagship that has influenced the exciting industry of space resources.”
Future Focus
Even though Hecht and his team have learned a lot about how to design a version of the instrument that is more efficient, building MOXIE 2.0 would not be the next step. Rather, it is make a full-scale framework that incorporates an oxygen generator like Spunk and a method for melting and store that oxygen.
But more than anything, Hecht would like to see other technologies get their turn on Mars. “We have to make decisions about which things need to be validated on Mars,” Hecht said. “I think there are many technologies on that list; I’m very pleased MOXIE was first.”
More About the Mission
A critical goal for Diligence’s central goal on Mars is astrobiology, including the quest for indications of old microbial life. The rover will describe the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and collect and store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for the first time.
Together with the European Space Agency (ESA), subsequent missions of NASA would send spacecraft to Mars to retrieve these sealed samples from the surface and bring them back to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration strategy, which also includes Artemis missions to the Moon to help prepare humans for Mars exploration.
The Perseverance rover is built and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, for the agency.
JPL deals with the Pizazz project for the Innovation Exhibition Missions program inside STMD. The Science Mission Directorate and the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate of NASA provided additional assistance to MOXIE.