According to media reports on September 2, although there is oxygen on Mars, the content is very low, not enough for people to breathe directly. To support future human exploration of the planet, NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have teamed up to develop an oxygen generator that can be used on Mars, producing as much oxygen as a small tree on Earth . The project, called MOXIE, is an essential part of NASA’s Perseverance mission to Mars, and aims to make the first attempt to convert resources from extraterrestrials into something useful for human missions to space. Researchers at MIT have discovered that their device can extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere and operate 24/7.
“This is what explorers have been doing since time immemorial: find out where you’re going resources are available, and find ways to use them.” Scientists and entrepreneurs are now calling for human exploration of Mars. Despite recent troubles, NASA’s much-anticipated lunar mission, Artemis, is seen as a transit point for exploring Mars over the next decade. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has hinted at a manned moon landing by 2029. Hoffman said there are many challenges to overcome to get humans to Mars, and astronauts have to endure high cosmic radiation during the long journey to Mars.
A round trip to Mars could take more than eight months, so space travelers must have plenty of food and medicine. But the most important thing is to provide enough oxygen. Once a temporary habitat is established on Mars, astronauts need to be able to breathe freely in it. When they go out to explore Mars, they also need to fill their space suits with oxygen. When astronauts return to Earth from Mars, they also need to use oxygen to make key rocket propellants. Hoffman noted that space agencies could send enough oxygen to Mars for astronauts to breathe and return home, but doing so would be very expensive because it would require multiple rocket launches. It would be cheaper to extract oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, which makes up 96 percent of the carbon dioxide.
To test the ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, NASA launched a small golden box on the Perseverance mission last year. Since April 2021, the MOXIE mission has produced oxygen on Mars at different times and in different seasonal conditions. The box produced about 6 grams of oxygen per hour in each experiment, equivalent to the output of an average small tree on Earth. For the technology to succeed, scientists will need to expand the size of the oxygen generator and ensure that it can continue to operate. To sustain humans on Mars and return them safely, at least about 2 to 3 kilograms of oxygen would need to be produced per hour, Hoffman said, which would require making oxygen generators hundreds of times more efficient.
MOXIE mission principal investigator Michael Hecht said: “The only thing we haven’t proven is whether the oxygen generators will work properly at dawn or dusk, when the temperature on Mars varies so much. But when we reach the final milestone , humans may be able to run on Mars anytime in the future.” NASA and MIT engineers plan to push the MOXIE device to its limits, boosting oxygen production and ensuring it works during Martian spring, when Mars Atmospheric density is at its greatest and carbon dioxide levels are higher. Engineers will monitor the wear and tear of the machine to see if it can withstand enough stress to demonstrate that it can be retrofitted into a complete system capable of running for thousands of hours continuously.
The engineer of the MOXIE project said that MOXIE is just a test mode. In the future, larger instruments will be sent to Mars to facilitate the production of oxygen at a rate of hundreds of trees per hour, so as to meet the standard of maintaining human survival on the surface of Mars. . Of course, if you want to achieve “interstellar immigration”, oxygen is not enough. In Musk’s previous plan, his team developed a rocket engine that can use methane liquid oxygen as fuel, so that materials can be drawn in situ after the rocket landed, and the methane rich in Mars itself is used for the return journey. fuel to travel back and forth between Earth and Mars. In addition, Musk also plans to build an ecological city suitable for human habitation on Mars.
Whether it is Musk’s “Mars City” project or the MOXIE oxygen production experiment at the University of Massachusetts, they are all contributing to the realization of “space immigration” for human beings. In particular, the success of MOXIE’s oxygen production is the first time in the true sense that humans have used the resources of extraterrestrial planets, so no matter from which point of view, this success has a historic status. Maybe “interstellar immigration” is no longer far away for human beings?