Perseverance Mars Rover made Oxygen

In News: For the first time, a device aboard the rover was able to produce oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere on Tuesday, according to the US space agency.

About the Perseverance Rover

In July of 2020, the project launched.
It is expected to land in the Jezero Crater on Mars.
Perseverance’s main mission is to look for traces of ancient life and gather rock and regolith samples to eventually return to Earth.
Perseverance is fueled by electrical energy produced by the radioactive decay of plutonium.
NASA Perseverance allows shape memory alloys to stay stable on Mars’ surface.
Perseverance is equipped with drills, cameras, and lasers and is expected to explore Mars.

Important Mission

Perseverance will be equipped with a one-of-a-kind instrument called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment), which will produce molecular oxygen on Mars for the first time using carbon dioxide from the planet’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere (ISRU means In Situ Resource Utilization: or the use of local resources to meet human needs or requirements of the spacecraft).
It will transport Ingenuity, the first ever Mars helicopter.
NASA is flying a helicopter for the first time on another planet or satellite.

How did Perseverance produce oxygen on Mars?

In its first operation since arriving on the Red Planet, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) produced 5 grams of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, enough for an astronaut to breathe for 10 minutes.
On Mars, carbon dioxide makes up ~96% of the gas in the planet’s atmosphere. Oxygen is only 0.13%, compared to 21% in Earth’s atmosphere.
Like a tree on Earth, MOXIE inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.
To produce oxygen, MOXIE separates oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules. It does so by using heat at a temperature of around 800 degrees Celsius, and in the process also produces carbon monoxide as a waste product, which it releases in the Martian atmosphere.
A technology demonstrator, MOXIE is designed to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour, and is placed inside the Perseverance rover. It is the size of a car battery, weighing 17.1 kg on Earth, but just 6.41 kg on Mars.
Through its first successful run, MOXIE was able to demonstrate that it survived its launch from Earth.
MOXIE is only a test model. Future oxygen generators that descend from its technology need to be about 100 times larger to support human missions on Mars.