NASA’s Perseverance Rover Just turned Co2 into Oxygen. Technology is Stupendous!

NASA’s recently sent the Perseverance Rover to Mars with some bonus technology: a device that can turn Co2. It is identical to how the trees convert the same on Earth. The device, called the Mars Oxygen In-situ Resource Utilisation Experiment, pulled Carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere to produce its first oxygen on Wednesday.

It’s a small amount- 5.4 grams, enough to keep an astronaut healthy for 10 minutes. Although, it’s a small time frame it’s interesting proof that the technology works on the red planet. That’s good news for sending human explorers to Mars. The condescending fact is that oxygen takes up a lot of space in the spacecraft and it becomes difficult for the astronauts to carry a huge proportion of them to Mars. This arises the need for the creation of oxygen by the astronauts on the Martian surface.

It will be required both for breathing and for fueling rockets to return to Earth. “MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars, “associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, Jim Reuter said in a press release on Wednesday.

An oxygen concentrator has become important in our everyday lives. Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe. Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home. It would be a significant breakthrough Innovation in the hope of increasing the numbers of expeditions on the Red Planet. The golden box holding the experiment is about the size of a car battery. It is just 1% the size of the devices the scientists hope to send to Mars.