LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday.
autoevolution 22 Apr 2021, 7:58 UTC ·
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Remember all those terraforming books you used to read, all those movies you used to watch? Well, at least part of them is no longer science fiction, as for the first time ever, a human-made machine was capable of generating oxygen on another planet. 1 photo
It is one of the many tasks the Perseverance rover has to complete on Mars. Aside from launching helicopters and gathering samples for a future mission to bring back to Earth, the rover is also used to generate oxygen where there is none. And on April 20, as the world was captivated by the Ingenuity helicopter, it did.
In first, NASA’s Mars rover makes oxygen on another planet
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April 22, 2021 10:51 IST
The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved by an experimental device aboard Perseverance
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Technicians at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lower the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the Perseverance rover.
| Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved by an experimental device aboard Perseverance
NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday.
15:48 • 22.04.21
The growing list of “firsts” for Perseverance, NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, includes converting some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen.
A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task. The test took place April 20, the 60th Martian day, or sol, since the mission landed February 18, the space agency s website reports.
While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact – isolating and storing oxygen on Mars to help power rockets that could lift astronauts off the planet’s surface. Such devices also might one day provide breathable air for astronauts themselves. MOXIE is an exploration technology investigation – as is the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) weather station – and is sponsored by NASA’s S
242 Technicians at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lower the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Washington, April 22
In a first, NASA s Perseverance Mars rover has converted some of the Red Planet s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen, the US space agency has said.
The task was accomplished by a toaster-size, six-wheeled robot aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment (MOXIE) on April 20.
The technology could pave the way for isolating and storing oxygen on Mars, which is 96 per cent carbon dioxide, to help power rockets that could lift astronauts off the planet s surface. Such devices also might one day provide breathable air for astronauts themselves.