-Anvi Atreja
In 2020, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program had four science-related goals: first, to determine whether life ever existed on Mars; second, to characterize the climate of Mars; third, to identify the geology of Mars; and four, to prepare for human exploration. One way to help prepare humans to survive on Mars is to extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.
The Mars rover known as Perseverance, launched into space on February, 18, 2021, accomplished many tasks. One task it was able to accomplish was to extract 5.4 grams of breathable oxygen from the Red Planet’s acidic air, which would be enough to keep an astronaut alive for 10 minutes. A toaster-sized instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), separates carbon dioxide from oxygen. According to MOXIE’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, “Its job is to break oxygen atoms off carbon dioxide, the primary component of Mars’ atmosphere. It’s like an electrical tree.”