NASA's MOXIE Successfully Create Oxygen on Mars; Is It Sufficient Enough to Supply Whole Red Planet?

NASA said it successfully created oxygen on Mars for the first time. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Project (MOXIE) has produced oxygen seven times in various settings, including day and night and over two Martian seasons, according to detailed data from the experiment.

The experiment was able to release 6 grams (0.2 ounces) of oxygen each hour, or around the pace of a tiny tree on Earth, according to an article in Science Advances. This may appear unassuming, but it proved that technology could finish the challenging task.

NASA's Moxie Successfully Creates Oxygen On Mars

The Register noted that a toaster-sized device called MOXIE could create oxygen on Mars. But only under extremely particular circumstances: it had to heat Martian air to 800°C (1,472°F) and pressurize it to one atmosphere of Earth, making it far denser than the atmosphere on the Red Planet.

While Guerra's team suggests employing specialized conducting membranes and non-thermal plasma. Combined, the concept creates a plasma reactor that can run without heat or re-pressurization under Martian conditions. The study claims that the air pressure on Mars is really "ideal for plasma ignition."

The researchers describe the two different oxygen-generating experiments they ran in their work. The first experiment employed DC glow discharge plasma super cooled to Martian temperatures, while the second used microwave discharges operating in a simulated Martian atmosphere.

(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Technicians in the clean room are carefully lowering the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover.

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The results are deemed "very encouraging considering that the plasma setup used was designed for fundamental research and is far from suited to the development of a prototype." according to the report. The CO2 dissociation (the separation of carbon and oxygen) rates in the DC experiment allegedly reached up to 30 percent, while the conversion rates in the MW experiment reached 35 percent.

The researchers estimated the potential output of an improved system based on their first findings. They came up with a figure of 14 grams of oxygen per hour in a plasma reactor weighing 6 kilograms (2.3 grams of oxygen per kilogram of equipment).

For instance, the space agency stated that NASA's MOXIE unit weighs 17.7 kilos and can top out at 10 grams of oxygen each hour.

Spacecraft Still Unable to Supply for Whole Planet

Although MOXIE is unequivocal evidence that oxygen can be produced on another planet, Vice underscored that the system is not yet reliable enough to support a habitat on Mars. To do that, researchers will need to scale MOXIE up to the size of a "small chest freezer," according to Hecht. At this magnitude, MOXIE 2.0 might produce enough oxygen to launch a four-person crew to the planet in a rocket or sustain 100 crew members on Mars.

Hecht added that scaling up the technology itself shouldn't be too difficult, but operating the system independently on Mars for thousands of hours would be more difficult, especially given that the original MOXIE has only operated for fewer than 100 hours since it landed last year.

Hecht and colleagues are keen to continue testing MOXIE in the meantime, both on Mars and in a facility that simulates Mars here on Earth, to push the limits of the technology. They anticipate boosting output during the Martian spring when atmospheric density and carbon dioxide levels are at their highest. On Mars, it is now the beginning of winter.

The future of Martian homes is looking brighter and better with a little moxie and MOXIE-generated oxygen.