NASA’s Rover Produced Breathable O2 On Mars

News Desk

Islamabad: NASA’s Perseverance rover has produced 4.3 ounces of breathing oxygen on the Red Planet Mars which is sufficient to keep an astronaut alive for three hours.

The rover produced the element using its Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) device which generated the oxygen by converting carbon dioxide in periodic bouts over two years.

Since first touching down on Mars in February 2021, the microwave-size device has generated 4.3 ounces (122 grams) of oxygen which is equivalent to what a small dog breathes in 10 hours. This gives scientists hope that human life might someday be sustained on this inhospitable planet.

NASA Headquarters Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Technology Demonstrations Director Trudy Kortes said, “We’re honoured to have backed a ground-breaking technology like MOXIE that could transform local resources into useful products needed for future exploration missions.”

According to NASA, carbon dioxide is abundantly present on Red Planet and accounts for 95 per cent of its tenuous atmosphere. Over the course of 16 experiments, the MOXIE gadget zapped small amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) in order to separate the oxygen atoms from the CO2 and analyse them for purity before sequestering them safely within a capsule. The leftovers were then emitted in the form of carbon monoxide.

Scientists mentioned that oxygen extraction devices won’t just be useful for future colonists to breathe but for making rocket fuel too.

NASA Deputy Administrator Pamela Melroy stated that developing technologies that let us utilize resources on the Moon and Mars is critical to building a long-term lunar presence, establishing a thriving lunar economy and allowing us to support an initial human exploration campaign to Mars.