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Nasa’s Perseverance rover creates BREATHABLE oxygen paving way for manned Mars missions
NASA’S Perseverance Mars rover has created oxygen from thin air, paving the way for future manned missions to the planet.
The $2billion robot converted carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the US space agency said on Wednesday.
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Perseverance has been scouring the surface of Mars since February 18[/caption]
The landmark achievement was made Tuesday by an experimental device aboard Perseverance, a six-wheeled science rover that landed on the Red Planet on February 18 after a seven-month journey from Earth.
In its first activation, the toaster-sized instrument dubbed MOXIE, short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, produced about five grams of oxygen.
That’s equivalent to roughly 10 minutes’ worth of breathing for an astronaut, Nasa said.
Although the initial output was modest, the feat marked the first experimental extraction of a natural resources from the environment of another planet for direct use by humans.
Perseverance’s Moxie experiment converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. A scaled-up version could provide astronauts with breathable air on future manned missions[/caption]
“MOXIE isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world,” Nasa’s Trudy Kortes said.
She called it the first technology of its kind to help future missions “live off the land” of another planet.
The instrument works through electrolysis, which uses extreme heat to separate oxygen atoms from molecules of carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 95 per cent of the atmosphere on Mars.
The remaining five per cent of Mars’ atmosphere, which is only about 1 per cent as dense as Earth’s, consists primarily of molecular nitrogen and argon. Oxygen exists on Mars in negligible trace amounts.
But an abundant supply is considered critical to eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.
It’ll be needed both as a sustainable source of breathable air for astronauts and as a necessary ingredient for rocket fuel to fly them home.
The volumes required for launching rockets into space from Mars are particularly daunting.
Perseverance – What’s on board?
Perseverance boasts a total of 19 cameras and two microphones, and carries seven scientific instruments.
- Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL)
An X-ray “ray gun” that will help scientists investigate the composition of Martian rock.
2. Radar Imager for Mars’ subsurface experiment (RIMFAX)
A ground-penetrating radar that will image buried rocks, meteorites, and even possible underground water sources up to a depth of 10 metres (33ft).
3. Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)
A bunch of sensors that will take readings of temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, and other atmospheric conditions.
4. Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE)
An experiment that will convert Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. A scaled-up version could be used in future to provide Martian colonists with breathable air.
5. SuperCam
A suite of instruments for measuring the makeup of rocks and regolith at a distance
6. Mastcam-Z
A camera system capable of taking “3D” images by combining two or more photos into one.
7. Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC)
From Baker Street to Mars: Sherloc contains an ultraviolet laser that will investigate Martian rock for organic compounds.
According to Nasa, getting four astronauts off the Martian surface would take about 15,000 pounds (seven metric tons) of rocket fuel, combined with 55,000 pounds (25 metric tons) of oxygen.
“Transporting a one-ton oxygen-conversion machine to Mars is more practical than trying to haul 25 tons of oxygen in tanks from Earth,” said MOXIE principal investigator and MIT scientist Michael Hecht.
Astronauts living and working on Mars would require perhaps one metric ton of oxygen between them to last an entire year, Hecht said.
MOXIE is designed to generate up to 10 grams per hour as a proof of concept, and scientists plan to run the machine at least another nine times over the next two years under different conditions and speeds, Nasa said.
The first oxygen conversion run came a day after Nasa achieved the historic first controlled powered flight of an aircraft on another planet with a successful takeoff and landing of a miniature robot helicopter on Mars.
Like MOXIE, the twin-rotor chopper dubbed Ingenuity hitched a ride to Mars with Perseverance.
The rover’s primary mission is to search for fossilised traces of ancient microbes that may have flourished on Mars billions of years ago.
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In other news, Nasa this week completed the first controlled flight on another planet following the lift-off of its Mars helicopter-drone, Ingenuity.
Nasa has baffled space fans by releasing an image of what appears to be a rainbow on Mars.
And, the mystery surrounding what looks like giant spiders on the surface of Mars may finally have been solved.
Would you like to travel to Mars? Let us know in the comments…
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