This Is One Mars Rover With MOXIE

Mars 2020 engineers install the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) into the chassis of the rover.
MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-situ Resource Utilization Experiment) is lowered into the chassis of NASA’s Perseverance in 2019. During the mission, MOXIE extracted oxygen from the Martian atmosphere 16 times, testing a way that future astronauts could make rocket propellant that would launch them back to Earth
NASA/JPL-Caltech
April 5, 2019
CreditNASA/JPL-Caltech
Language
  • english

Members of NASA’s Mars 2020 project install the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) into the chassis of NASA’s next Mars rover. MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing. The car-battery-sized instrument does this by collecting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Martian atmosphere and electrochemically splitting the carbon dioxide molecules into oxygen and carbon monoxide molecules. The oxygen is then analyzed for purity before being vented back out to the Martian atmosphere along with the carbon monoxide and other exhaust products.

The image was taken on March 20, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s High Bay 1 Cleanroom at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California.