MIT’s Mars Oxygen Factory Successfully Produces Air Akin To A Small Tree
By Alexa Heah, 02 Sep 2022
Alone on the Red Planet, nearly 100 million miles from Earth, sits the rather lonely Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, measuring no larger than the size of a lunchbox.
Despite its small stature, it appears the instrument can generate as much oxygen as a small tree, having begun its trial on Mars from April 2021, two months after it touched down together with the Perseverance Rover.
In a recently published study, MIT researchers documented that MOXIE has been able to produce the vital gas in a variety of atmospheric conditions, through day and night, and even withstanding the changing Martian seasons.
No matter the environment, the instrument successfully reached its target of generating six grams of oxygen per house—or in simpler terms, the rate of a decently-sized tree here on our planet.
If the entire experiment proves successful, scientists could develop a scaled-up version of MOXIE that will precede a human mission to Mars, helping to produce oxygen at the rate of several hundred trees to sustain the astronauts once they arrive.
“We have learned a tremendous amount that will inform future systems at a large scale,” quipped Michael Hecht, Principal Investigator of the MOXIE Mission at MIT’s Haystack Observatory.
Intriguingly, MOXIE is also the first demonstration of “in-situ resource utilization,” or for us non-geeks, harvesting and using a planet’s materials—such as carbon dioxide on Mars—to produce the resources needed.
“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” explained MOXIE Deputy Principal Investigator Jeffrey Hoffman.
Going forward, the researchers hope to take advantage of the Martian springtime, which features high atmospheric density and carbon dioxide levels, to produce as much oxygen as possible.
Additionally, they will be on the lookout for signs of wear and tear on the instrument, and extrapolate the data to how a larger, full-scale system would possibly run in the future.
“To support a human mission to Mars, we have to bring a lot of stuff from Earth, like computers, spacesuits, habitats. But dumb old oxygen? If you can make it there, go for it—you’re way ahead of the game.”
[via New Atlas and MIT, cover image via NASA / JPL-Caltech]