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If we are ever going to put a human on Mars, we need to create an oxygen supply for a number of reasons... The first is for breathing, of course, but the 2nd reason is to provide a fuel source... Mars' atmosphere is mostly (95%) Carbon Dioxide (CO2)... For those that have not had chemistry, this means that there is one carbon atoms and two Oxygen atoms.
(Carbon dioxide is a colorless gas with a density about 60% higher than that of dry air. Carbon dioxide consists of a carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It occurs naturally in Earth's atmosphere as a trace gas. - Wikipedia)
Here is more from Seeker:
"NASA’s next rover mission has a special device aboard that’ll do something revolutionary: make oxygen on Mars for the first time. If you saw the 2015 film ‘The Martian,’ you might recall main character Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) mentioning something called an oxygenator…well, NASA’s newest device isn’t so far off from the sci-fi tech.
The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, better known as MOXIE, uses a technology called solid oxide electrolysis, and the goal? To produce oxygen from the Martian carbon-dioxide atmosphere for both propellant and breathing.
NASA is continuing to prepare for human exploration of Mars and is set to launch its next rover to the red planet in 2020. Seven instruments will be aboard the rover, six of which are focused on sample analysis like this SuperCam and a spectrometer called PIXL that’ll measure chemical signatures of Martian rocks. And MOXIE is the seventh."
Enjoy!
(Carbon dioxide is a colorless gas with a density about 60% higher than that of dry air. Carbon dioxide consists of a carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It occurs naturally in Earth's atmosphere as a trace gas. - Wikipedia)
Here is more from Seeker:
"NASA’s next rover mission has a special device aboard that’ll do something revolutionary: make oxygen on Mars for the first time. If you saw the 2015 film ‘The Martian,’ you might recall main character Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) mentioning something called an oxygenator…well, NASA’s newest device isn’t so far off from the sci-fi tech.
The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, better known as MOXIE, uses a technology called solid oxide electrolysis, and the goal? To produce oxygen from the Martian carbon-dioxide atmosphere for both propellant and breathing.
NASA is continuing to prepare for human exploration of Mars and is set to launch its next rover to the red planet in 2020. Seven instruments will be aboard the rover, six of which are focused on sample analysis like this SuperCam and a spectrometer called PIXL that’ll measure chemical signatures of Martian rocks. And MOXIE is the seventh."
Enjoy!
NASA
Space
Astronomy
Physics
Science
Edited 4 y ago
Posted 4 y ago
Responses: 3
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That's excellent. They could use it for breathing apparatus and fuel. According to another recent video I saw here they won't be able to create an atmosphere because the solar wind will blow it away. Unless there's something I don't know.
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Sgt (Join to see)
Just breathing and fuel at this point, but it would be possible somewhere down the road to convert the CO2 to breathable oxygen with a much scaled up process... It certainly would not be completed for a long time (100 Earth years or more, but theoretically doable)... Not sure about the Solar wind effect at this point, but that could be a shoe stopper... Still lots we do not know or understand about Mars... but an exciting opportunity for sure!
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