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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Extracts First Oxygen from Red Planet
- kfarr 5y ago> After a two-hour warmup period, MOXIE began producing oxygen at a rate of 6 grams per hour. The rate was reduced two times during the run (labeled as “current sweeps”) in order to assess the status of the instrument. After an hour of operation the total oxygen produced was about 5.4 grams, enough to keep an astronaut healthy for about 10 minutes of normal activity.
- remarkEon 5y agoHow would you measure the efficiency of this process? I’m assuming this was merely test hardware and an at-scale implementation would be much better. 5.4g/hour for 10min of breathing in a “first try” of this seems, to a KSP-trained laymen, like a pretty good trade?
- nickhalfasleep 5y agoI wonder if this counts as the first resource extraction beyond earth? Many samples have been taken and returned by people and machines.
- castratikron 5y agoSo it's like the opposite of a catalytic converter in a car?