NASA has produced sufficient oxygen on Mars to maintain an astronaut for a number of hours in a world-first experiment.

The Perseverance rover, which landed on the crimson planet in February 2021, has been periodically burning via the ambiance's carbon dioxide to generate small quantities of oxygen for greater than two years.

Using a tool no bigger than a microwave, they have been in a position to extract 122g of oxygen in complete - which may help an astronaut for about three hours.

Around 5g is sufficient for an astronaut for 10 minutes, giving hope that manufacturing on a bigger scale might help human life and supply rocket gas throughout future explorations.

The machine, referred to as MOXIE, produced oxygen on 16 separate events because the first try in April 2021, and the consequence has far exceeded NASA's unique targets, in accordance with Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.

"MOXIE's impressive performance shows that it is feasible to extract oxygen from Mars' atmosphere - oxygen that could help supply breathable air or rocket propellant to future astronauts," she mentioned.

"Developing technologies that let us use resources on the Moon and Mars is critical to build a long-term lunar presence, create a robust lunar economy and allow us to support an initial human exploration campaign to Mars."

At its peak, MOXIE created 12g of oxygen in an hour, which was double NASA's goal, and it got here in at the least 98% purity.

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On its last run final month, the instrument made 9.8g of oxygen.

The Perseverance rover's major goal is to seek for indicators of historical microbial life, however MOXIE was targeted on investigating circumstances for future human exploration.

The similar mission additionally noticed the primary flight on one other planet, with the Ingenuity mini-helicopter taking off successfully in April 2021.