Now the oxygen on Mars is enough to breathe for 100 minutes ...

Text ｜ Wang Fang

In 2021, NASA (NASA) conducted small experiments to make oxygen on Mars, which successfully produced oxygen for about 100 minutes to breathe.

The project will now expand the scale to support the future Mars exploration task of human beings.

Mars Oxygen in situ resource utilization experiment (Moxie) device landed on this red planet in February 2021 with the "perseverance". For more than a year, Moxie has conducted 7 experiments. Each hour, it can stabilize the oxygen of about 15 minutes under various harsh planet conditions.

It has a total of 50 grams of oxygen, which is equivalent to a 100 -minute breathing oxygen amount of astronauts.

Moxie oxygen -making device landed with the "perseverance" Mars. Image source: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

"From a deeper point of view, this is very successful." Moxie co -person in charge and Michael Hecht from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whether at extreme temperature or harsh sandstorm, Moxie can produce high -purity oxygen after daily.

Moxie inhaled carbon dioxide from Mars at the atmosphere through the pump and compressor, and used the heater to increase the air temperature to 800 ° C. Then extract oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide to produce oxygen.

Before release of oxygen, Moxie will always test its content.

The NASA team is now looking for a larger device. It can not only provide sufficient life support for the manned Mars mission, but also provide sufficient oxygen to allow astronauts to return to the earth.

However, NASA Johnson Space Center's Gerald Sanders said it will face some challenges in expanding the scale of this technology. Moxie is very small, only the barbecue bread machine.

If you make a larger version of Moxie, you need to manage its internal temperature and ensure that the device is evenly heated to prevent damage.

Sanders said that an oxygen equipment that can support human tasks needs to run continuously for about 400 days, while Moxie has only lasted for an hour at a time.

"No matter what technology adopted, it has been invested for a long time on hardware." Nevertheless, Sanders said that Moxie's first year's success took a big step for displaying the potential of the technology.

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"China Science News" (2022-09-02 No. 2 Edition International)

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Edit | Zhao Lu

Capture | Guo Gang

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