On Mars, this golden box will soon produce oxygen. For human explorers, this is wonderful news.

 

The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument is carefully lowered into the Perseverance rover's tail. (Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Perseverance, NASA's newest rover, successfully landed on Mars on February 18 and is now embarking on a scientific exploration of the Red Planet. But, with a tiny instrument known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, the car-size robot will help pave the way for potential humans to fly to our neighboring planet in the coming weeks (MOXIE).

MOXIE is gold-colored and about the size of a bread box, and it will soon be extracting precious oxygen from Mars' toxic atmosphere. It's tucked away within Perseverance's chassis, where it'll carry out the first demonstration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) on another world, which entails using local resources for exploration rather than taking anything from Earth.

According to Eric Daniel Hinterman, an aerospace engineering doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the MOXIE team, NASA has long been involved in ISRU and put out a call for an oxygen-producing experiment when Perseverance was first conceived.

Although astronauts need oxygen to breathe, it's even more necessary as a rocket propellant, according to Hinterman. When oxygen is mixed with hydrogen, a strong explosion occurs, which is used to lift many modern rockets from their launch pads.

According to NASA, a spacecraft carrying humans to Mars will require between 66,000 and 100,000 pounds (30,000 and 45,000 kilograms) of oxygen to return home, in addition to the propellant needed to get off Earth and travel to Mars. We can send oxygen from Earth to Mars, but making it on the surface will save us a lot of money, according to Hinterman.

Any extra oxygen provided by ISRU technology could be used in life-support systems for astronauts on Mars' surface, according to Hinterman.

Perseverance had to go through a complicated sky crane maneuver and the famed "seven minutes of terror" in order to hit the ground, which subjected all of its components to some pretty intense powers. The MOXIE team placed the instrument through a series of "aliveness" checks a few days after landing to ensure it was in working order.

Hinterman said, "We had it turn on and submit some data [to confirm] that it survived." We popped some champagne and celebrated when we received the results.

MOXIE's first oxygen-producing run has yet to be planned, but it is expected to take place during the rover's first months on Mars. Hinterman explained that the instrument works with a technology known as solid oxygen electrolysis.

Taking a small sample of the Martian atmosphere, which is almost entirely carbon dioxide (a molecule of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms), is the first step in this process. MOXIE can use a voltage to heat the air to nearly 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). This should break down the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and a single oxygen atom.

MOXIE would not retain any of the oxygen it produces, instead ensuring that it was made successfully and then releasing it back into the atmosphere, according to Hinterman. He added that it's just a tiny prototype, about 200 times smaller than a computer like this that will be used on a potential human mission.

Perseverance, NASA's Mars 2020 rover, is seen here storing samples of Martian rocks in tubes for delivery to Earth in the future. (Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The experiment will be repeated several times over the course of a Martian year — on a hot summer day, a cold winter night, and during a global or local dust storm, according to Hinterman — to ensure that it works in a variety of situations.

Since a scaled-up version of MOXIE will be vital infrastructure on a potential human mission, this is the case. Though the technology works on Earth, Hinterman believes that testing it on Mars is crucial to be secure in something that humans can depend on for survival.

He is ecstatic to be a part of a project that is helping to demonstrate something crucial for human Mars exploration, and he is optimistic that such a mission will take place in the coming decades. He said, "I'm dedicating my career to bringing humans to Mars." I'll take it personally if we don't have humans on Mars in my lifetime.

Originally published on Live Science.