Small Device Currently on Mars Is Generating as Much Oxygen as a Tree, Scientists Reveal

The MOXIE experiment has proven that a lunchbox-sized device can reliably produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

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By Sarah Wells

August 31, 2022, 11:00am

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IMAGE: NASA

If you thought packing the car for a cross-country move was hard, packing a space shuttle for a move to Mars will be a new kind of headache. In addition to bringing items like food and water, spaceships heading to the red planet will also need to bring scientific experiments, emergency supplies, and living habitats. 

Luckily for these pioneering astronauts though, it looks like one of the heaviest—and most important—resources will be provided on site: oxygen. In fact, a lunchbox-sized device currently on the surface of Mars is already reliably generating as much oxygen as a tree, scientists revealed on Wednesday.

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Oxygen will be important not only to provide astronauts breathable air when they’re off-planet but also to help fuel rockets to eventually take them back to Earth. In a new paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers from MIT explain how a small experiment roaming Mars on the back of NASA’s Perseverance rover is proof that it’s possible to create oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. 

This experiment is also the first to successfully harvest and use resources on any planetary body, a process that will be important not only for Martian exploration but future lunar habitats as well.

Michael Hecht is a co-author on the new paper and principal investigator of the project, called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment). He told Motherboard in an email that researchers focused on harvesting oxygen because it would be one of the most difficult resources to bring from Earth and would have multiple roles to play in creating a sustainable habitat on Mars.

“I like to say rockets breathe a lot more than we do,” Hecht said. “Just for the lift-off to orbit, the rocket will use more that 10 times the amount of fuel than the crew of 4-6 will use in their year-and-a-half stay on the surface, and hence it will need 10 times as much oxygen.” 

MOXIE first landed on Mars in February 2021 and since then has been powered up seven different times under different seasonal and weather conditions to create oxygen us