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NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Extracts First Oxygen from Red Planet

• yrgulation 6y ago
  “In this first operation, MOXIE’s oxygen production was quite modest – about 5 grams” - one small step for a robot, one giant leap for humankind. I am thoroughly impressed by what is being achieved as of lately. Well done and many thanks to the people making this possible.
• matheweis 6y ago
  > Mars’ atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. MOXIE works by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. A waste product, carbon monoxide, is emitted into the Martian atmosphere. That doesn’t seem like a process you’d want to scale. I wonder why they didn’t go for the process that splits CO2 into O2 and pure carbon? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08824-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08824-8
  • bocklund 6y ago
    The abstract of that paper includes: > Due to the inhibition of van der Waals adhesion at the liquid interface, the electrode was remarkably resistant to deactivation via coking caused by solid carbonaceous species. MOXIE is solid state technology and having solid C reaction products would very likely deactivate the cell by clogging up the triple phase boundaries where the reactions occur.