NASA’s Perseverance rover makes first breathable oxygen on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars made the first breathable oxygen on another planet on Tuesday.

The rover used a toaster-sized instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) to create 5 grams of oxygen ,which is enough for an astronaut to breathe for 10 minutes on the planet, a NASA press release states.

MOXIE extracts the carbon dioxide that is abundant in the air, made out of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, and separates the carbon from the oxygen. The instrument’s waste product is carbon monoxide.

“This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for Space Technology Mission Directorate. 

“MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars,” he continued. “Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe; rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.”

A mission to Mars with astronauts in the future would need 55,000 pounds of oxygen for the rocket fuel, and astronauts would need one metric ton of oxygen for the year.

A one-ton instrument like MOXIE that converts oxygen and could produce 25 tons of oxygen by using Mars’s own atmosphere would be more practical and economical, the press release says.

MOXIE will be tested nine more times in three different phases.

Phase one will test MOXIE’s functionality, phase two will test the instrument in different conditions, such as time of day or season, and in phase three different operating modes will be tried with “new wrinkles, such as a run where we compare operations at three or more different temperatures,” MOXIE’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht, said. 

Converting oxygen is another first for Perseverance after the rover’s helicopter Ingenuity made history on Monday with the first controlled flight on Mars.