The diligent rover produced oxygen on the red planet

New record for the credit of perseverance. NASA rover converts carbon dioxide from Mars’ atmosphere into oxygen, the first of its kind on the planet, the US space agency announced on Wednesday (April 21). The demonstration took place on Tuesday, and NASA hopes that future versions of the test instrument will be explored by humans.

Not only will this process create oxygen for future astronauts to breathe, but they will also be able to block the amount of oxygen needed to launch the rocket on its return journey from Earth.

The Mars Oxygen In-Resource Utilization Test (Moxy) is a car battery-sized gold box located on the front right side of the rover. It uses electricity and chemistry to separate CO2 molecules, producing oxygen on the one hand and carbon monoxide on the other.

For his first experiment, Moxie produced 5 grams of oxygen, enough for a normal-functioning astronaut to breathe for 10 minutes. The engineers in charge of Moxie will now conduct further tests to try to maximize this result. The device is designed to produce 10 grams of oxygen per hour.