NASA succeeded in producing oxygen on the Red Planet

This is important news for the conquest of space. NASA Just confirmed that it has succeeded in producing, in MarsEnough oxygen to allow an astronaut to breathe for 100 minutes, according to reports new world In an article posted by slate.

The device was sent to the red planet in February 2021, at the same time as sending Perseverance rover. Called Moxie, for an “in-situ oxygen use Mars resource experiment,” it absorbs Martian carbon dioxide, then raises the air temperature to about 800°C, allowing oxygen atoms to be truncated from Carbon Dioxide. Thus he produced fifteen minutes of oxygen per hour, out of a total of seven hours.

“wow”

The teams that participated in this project were happy with the results. The resulting oxygen will be of high purity. “It’s a wow,” said Michael Hecht of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Therefore, NASA will plan to develop a similar larger device in order to produce enough oxygen to supply the team during its entire stay and allow the trip back to Earth. But the challenge is daunting: it will be necessary to ship larger machines to Mars and, above all, produce oxygen without interruption for at least 400 days.