Out of thin air: Nasa extracts oxygen from the Red Planet

Space

Nasa's Trudy Kortes called it the first technology of its kind to help future missions “live off the land” of another planet. Pictured the Mars Rover Perseverance from which the experimental device which extracted the oxygen, MOXIE operated. Photo: Reuters

Steve Gorman

April 23 2021 02:30 AM

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 has said.

The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved on 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 grammes of oxygen, equivalent to roughly 10 minutes’ worth of breathing for an astronaut, Nasa said.

“MOXIE isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world,” Trudy Kortes, from Nasa’s Space Technology Mission Directorate said in a statement. She called it the first technology of its kind to help future missions “live off the land” of another planet.

The instrument works through electrolysis, which uses extreme heat to separate oxygen atoms from molecules of carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 95pc of the atmosphere on Mars.

Oxygen exists on Mars in negligible trace amounts.

But an abundant supply is considered critical to eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.

The volumes of oxygen required for launching rockets into space from Mars are particularly daunting.

According to Nasa, getting four astronauts off the Martian surface would take about 15,000 pounds (7 metric tonnes) of rocket fuel, combined with 55,000 pounds (25 metric tonnes) of oxygen.

Transporting a one-tonne oxygen-conversion machine to Mars is more practical than trying to haul 25 tonnes of oxygen in tanks from Earth, MOXIE principal investigator Michael Hecht, of MIT, said in Nasa’s news release.

The first oxygen conversion run came a day after Nasa achieved the historic first controlled powered flight of an aircraft on another planet with a successful takeoff and landing of a miniature robot helicopter on Mars.