NASA's Perseverance Rover carries tree-like 'Moxie' that will produce oxygen on Mars

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, which was launched earlier this month, has also carried several essential instruments along with tree-like Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). The Moxie will be able to generate oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Red Planet similar to the trees on earth. If successful, the Mpxie would be highly useful in future manned missions to build a biosphere that can support life. 

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover and  Ingenuity helicopter that was lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on July 30 will land on the Red Planet February 18, 2021, and will conduct its ‘main job’ of finding signs of ancient life along with collecting rock and soil samples for a possible return to Earth making it the first rover for Astrobiology. The entire duration of the mission under NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is nearly 687 earth days that sums up one Mars year. 

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Moxie can produce up to 10 gms O2 per hour

According to NASA, the 17.1-kilogramme Moxie can produce up to 10 grams of oxygen or O2 every hour. The operation time of the instrument is approximately 60 minutes of oxygen production per experiment, that will be scheduled intermittently over the duration of the mission. Michael Hecht, the Principal Investigator has said that when the organisation will send humans to the Martian Planet, the Moxie would come in handy for oxygen. 

Michael Hecht said, “When we send humans to Mars, we will want them to return safely, and to do that they need a rocket to lift off the planet. Liquid oxygen propellant is something we could make there and not have to bring with us. One idea would be to bring an empty oxygen tank and fill it up on Mars."

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5 things to know about Moxie

1. Carbon Dioxide makes up approximately 96 per cent in the atmosphere of Mars while Oxygen is only 0.13 per cent which is very low as compared to 21 per cent on the Earth’s atmosphere. Moxie will convert Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen just like trees on earth.
2. Moxie is a test model and is of the size of a car battery. However, future manned missions by NASA would carry oxygen generators similar to this model but 100 times larger.
3. Moxie will help the future explorers because to launch off the planet, human explorers need at least 33 to 50 tons of fuel, that is around the weight of Space Shuttle.
4. Moxie world in the same manner as a tree.
5. Homemade liquid oxygen on Mars could supply more than 75 per cent of the propellant humans need for exploration on the Martian Planet.

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