NASA’s toaster-sized device can make oxygen on Mars
By Pranshu Verma, September 1, 2022 at 3:13 p.m. EDT
If humans want to explore Mars in the future, they’ll need to create oxygen. Now, a small device the size of a toaster is on the planet doing just that.
In a study released this week in the journal Science Advances, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment — known as MOXIE — can make oxygen from carbon dioxide, abundant in Mars’ atmosphere.
The experiment, part of NASA’s Perseverance Rover Mission that landed on Mars in February of 2021, is the first time resources from another planet have been transformed into something useful for human missions, researchers said. The small box, created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT, makes enough oxygen to match the output of a small tree on Earth, and can do it during the day and night during multiple Martian seasons.
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To test their ability to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, NASA brought a small, golden box on its Perseverance Rover mission last year. Since April of 2021, MOXIE has run several tests in which it produced oxygen during various times of the Martian day and during different seasonal conditions. During each experiment, the box created roughly 6 grams of oxygen per hour, equal to the output of a modest tree on Earth. (In its most recent test, which will be published in a future paper, Hoffman said the machine’s output increased to 10 grams per hour.)
Verder lezen:
https://www.washingtonpos.../01/mars-oxygen-nasa-mit/
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