MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars
An gadget the size of a lunchbox is demonstrating its ability to consistently carry out the work of a tiny tree on the red and dusty surface of Mars, some 100 million miles from Earth. Since it landed on Mars in February 2021 as part of NASA's Perseverance rover mission, the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, has been successfully producing oxygen from the Red Planet's carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. Researchers say that by the end of 2021, MOXIE was able to manufacture oxygen on seven experimental runs, in a variety of atmospheric circumstances, including day and night and throughout the Martian seasons, according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances. The instrument produced six grams of oxygen per hour on each run, or about the same amount as a small tree on Earth. According to researchers, a scaled-up MOXIE may be transported to Mars before a human trip to create oxygen continually at the rate of several hundred trees. At t...