In a major advancement toward sending astronauts to Mars, a toaster-sized instrument aboard the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-managed Perseverance rover successfully extracted oxygen from the atmosphere of the Red Planet, NASA officials announced today.
Photo of Mars from the Perseverance rover - AAP
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NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the US space agency says.
The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved Tuesday by an experimental device aboard Perseverance, a six-wheeled science rover that landed on the Red Planet on February 18 after a seven-month journey from earth.
In its first activation, the toaster-sized instrument dubbed MOXIE, short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment, produced about five grams of oxygen, equivalent to roughly 10 minutes worth of breathing for an astronaut, NASA said.
NASA announced on Wednesday that its Perseverance rover has extracted the first sample of oxygen from Mars. Libby Hogan reports.
The Perseverance rover may be parked at an overlook to capture any flights by the Ingenuity helicopter over the next two weeks, but it s not wasting any of its time on Mars.
The rover on Tuesday successfully converted some of the plentiful carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen as a first test of its MOXIE instrument. The name MOXIE is short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
After warming up for about two hours, MOXIE produced 5.4 grams of oxygen. This is enough to sustain an astronaut for about 10 minutes.
NASA converts carbon dioxide from air on Mars into breathable oxygen
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Thursday Apr 22, 2021
Technicians at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lower the MOXIE instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover in an undated photograph in Pasadena, California. Photo: Reuters
NASA extracts breathable oxygen from thin Martian air.
In its first activation, toaster-sized instrument dubbed MOXIE, short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, produced about 5 grams of oxygen.
This is equivalent to roughly 10 minutes worth of breathing for an astronaut, says NASA.
LOS ANGELES: 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.
By Bill Galluccio
NASA Perseverance Rover Lands On Mars
NASA announced that the Mars rover Perseverance successfully converted martian air into breathable oxygen. The space agency said that the rover used a special instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) to extract carbon dioxide from the air. The machine then superheated the carbon dioxide to separate the carbon and oxygen molecules. The device, which is the size of a toaster, stores the oxygen molecules and releases carbon monoxide back into the air.
In two hours, MOXIE produced 5.4 grams of oxygen, which equates to roughly ten minutes of breathable air.