This week heralded another first for humankind: we made oxygen on another planet. Now, it was only enough for 10 minutes of breathable air (or 5 grams), but this is another incredible milestone for the future of space travel.
While the super-cool rotocopter, Ingenuity, has gotten much of the fanfare of late, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Experiment – or M.O.X.I.E. – blows my mind even more. This week, this car-battery sized piece of equipment successfully turned the CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere (which makes up 96% of its atmosphere) into O2.
Proving we can make oxygen on Mars is crucial to our plans to bring humans to the Red Planet. You might think that the oxygen that machines like this produce would be used primarily for humans to breathe, but liquid oxygen is also a key component of rocket propellant. In fact, a human would only need 1 metric ton of oxygen for a year on Mars. But, lifting off of Mars would would require 25 metric tons of oxygen for a trip home. All that extra weight would be hard to bring with us, so it’s much more practical to make it there.
MOXIE works by breaking apart the CO2 molecule into Oxygen and Carbon monoxide using high levels of heat (800 Celsius). Or, let the smarter guy below explain it:
Second Flight Success for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
This week, Ingenuity also successfully completed its second test flight, which involved a longer, higher hover, and tilting the craft 5 degrees. Check and check – onto the next!
SpaceX Crew-2 Mission First to Re-Use Rockets
Finally, early tomorrow morning – April 23rd at 2:49am PT – four astronauts are scheduled to blast off to the Space Station on the next SpaceX mission. This will be the second crewed mission to the Space Station for SpaceX, and the first with a female astronaut aboard. Megan McArthur, whose husband Bob Behnken was one of the two astronauts on the first crewed SpaceX mission, will be piloting the capsule. This take-off will also be the first crewed mission to re-use materials from previous launches. The Falcon 9 rocket first stage was previously used for the Crew-1 launch and the Crew Dragon spacecraft was used in Demo-2. Megan McArthur will literally be in the same pilot seat that her husband sat in a few months ago. Bookmark the web link below to watch the blast-off:
What space events are you most excited about?
