Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

MOXIE unit being installed into the Perseverance rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

GOLDEN, Colorado – Breathe easy. There’s good news from Mars. The first experiment to suck in the planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-laden air has achieved a major milestone in transforming that native resource into oxygen.

The toaster-sized device, if built to a larger scale, can be used not just for astronaut expeditions to Mars for breathing, but also for rocket fuel.

Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Tucked inside NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, the hardware is tagged MOXIE for Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.

Master MOXIE technologist, MIT’s Michael Hecht.
Image credit: Barbara David

Researchers recently pushed MOXIE to a maximum production level – a factor of two higher than reached earlier.

For details on this milestone on Mars, go to my new Space.com story – “Mars rover Perseverance sets new record for making oxygen on Red Planet” – at:

https://www.space.com/mars-perseverance-rover-oxygen-experiment-moxie-record