We admire your MOXIE, Earthlings: Perseverance rover gizmo produces oxygen for first time on Mars Earthlings have succeeded in creating oxygen away from their lush home world and on the unforgiving dust planet Mars for the first time, using equipment on a robot they have lovingly dubbed Perseverance. The gas was created in what's been called MOXIE: the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. For this test, a " …
Hats off there - while the tech has been known for some time - its a big deal to actually do it on another planet.
aerogel is notoriously fragile stuff - I imagine that NASA has developed improvements in that and the design of the housing which could have applications here.
eg - it would be easy to transport yer pfizer vaccine in a box with a layer of that round it....
Or a flask which stays at temp for days
This is not only impressive as a demonstration, it opens up a variety of possibilities.
Any habitat will need a steady supply of oxygen and water extracted from subsurface ice is too valuable on its own to separate out the oxygen (except as fuel for a ground to orbit vehicle).
There have already been studies done for using carbon monoxide and oxygen as a fuel source for Martian rockets to enable ground to ground transportation (they cannot generate enough thrust for ground to orbit).
Improvements might supplement or replace spacesuit oxygen stores.
Some people bliss out at oxygen bars. I bliss out at space oxygen research.
From the description it sounds like it took around 30 minutes. Presumably the current limiting factors are energy input and size. Ideally, you'd also want to be able to source locally some kind of reduction agent in the hope of being able to reduce the temperature required. However, seeing as CO2 to CO is considered an essential part of our own renewables strategies, it's to be hoped that improvements here can be expected .
Water will be the key resource: by photosynthesis or synthetic methods,
CO2 + H2O + energy -> sugars, cellulose + O2 = comfortable for humans.
There's evidently plenty of CO2 and presumably enough solar energy, but
not much obvious water, so I suppose there will be some effort to find it
in "hidden" deposits and put your Turbinium Reactors or whatever there.
The article talks of distillation, but Mashable mentions electrolysis of carbon dioxide at 1,400 °F.
NASA: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/moxie/for-scientists/ confirms that it's electrolysis of carbon dioxide at ~1 Atmosphere* at 800 C.
* presumably 1 Earth atmoshere, i.e. ~100,000 Pa
seeing as CO2 to CO is considered an essential part of our own renewables strategies,
Question!
CO2 non toxic greenhouse gas
CO very toxic ( it replaces oxygen in our red blood cells and then won't let go, so you suffocate from the inside, not pretty at all) colourless, odorless, and tends to puddle a certain locations.
sunscreen is safer
I wonder why they don't just freeze out the carbon dioxide.
That would leave a mixture of about 3.7% oxygen with the remainder being nitrogen (56%) and argon (41%); then I'd have thought you could increase the proportion of oxygen by fractional distillation.
But presumably they thought of that already.
Plutonium dioxide and batteries - the same system that Curiosity uses.
The lump of plutonium dioxide generated 110 watts at launch, so slightly less by now. The batteries are needed to store enough energy for processes that need more than 110 watts, e.g. driving the rover or running MOXIE and PIXL.
(Slightly) more detail here: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/electrical-power/
This isn't science. It's barely engineering. There was absolutely no question that the process would work. There was absolutely no question that the equipment would work, so long as it was not degraded. It seems to me that the biggest technical achievement was keeping the areogel intact for the trip--but really, we had very high confidence in that.
I know NASA is desperate to remain relevant, but what, exactly does this demonstration do beyond spend money & inspire grade schoolers?
> It seems to me that the biggest technical achievement was keeping the areogel intact for the trip
"""not all aerogels are easy to break! Classic (or 'legacy') aerogels exhibit extremely high strength-to-weight ratios and are able (in principle) to hold thousands of times their weight in applied force, however also typically exhibit extremely low fracture toughness, that is, the ability to resist propagation of flaws in the material. As a result, it is possible for a classic aerogel block that is 96% air by volume to hold a brick thousands of times its own weight, but only if the weight is placed on the monolith gently and there are no major cracks in the aerogel.
New mechanically strong and machinable aerogels such as Airloy® strong aerogels made by Aerogel Technologies fix this problem. Airloy aerogels are hundreds of times stronger and stiffer than classic aerogels and simultaneously durable and fracture tough. Unlike legacy aerogels, Airloy aerogels can be machined (drilled, tapped, turned, milled) and bent without breaking. The strength, stiffness, thermal conductivity, and other properties of Airloy aerogels depend on the product series."""
http://www.aerogeltechnologies.com/about/faqs/
I know NASA is desperate to remain relevant, but what, exactly does this demonstration do beyond spend money & inspire grade schoolers? .... Claptrap314
I don't understand how you don't get it, Claptrap314, whenever you have just got it so thoroughly.
The founding fundamental raison d'être of NASA was always and still is the very successful inventive spend money and inspire grade schoolers platform which naturally morphs and expands and envelops into developments in some extremely advanced territories with alienating head space stations to prove as benign and productive and attractive whenever tested on Earth.
If ignorant humanity is hell bent on buggering up life on Earth, a SMARTR Alien Race sustained and returned from novel terra-phorming outposts on the likes of Mars and Venus and the Moon will have experience vital beyond cost and price to rebuild a damaged and turned environmentally hostile home planet.
It is certainly beyond question the much better and more pragmatic option to consider and unanimously choose whenever anyone pipes up with the ridiculous notion to transfer humanity lock, stock and barrel to another made environmentally friendly planet.
Build Mars and Venus and Moon stations to support the existence and growth and expansion of life and productive and peaceful enjoyable alien co-habitation in a challenging space place and transfer the knowledge and technology used and tested back down to Earth for use there ......... build Simulations on TerraFirma and Realise and Create Earth as an Alien Invaded Space with Future Technology and Immaculate Treasure already long ago gifted for lavish debt free spending on every need that requires a feed and/or seeding.
Surely that is Simple and Not Too Difficult to Do. After all, it is not as if you will be doing any of it without all of the help and information and intelligence that you would need, not being made freely available to you, is it ‽ . .......
Or is that the source fundamental fear that presently renders the human condition in such dire catastrophic strait states with specific regard to future progression ........ they are nowhere near smart enough to make the requisite quantum leaps?
Well, now that y'all know that the necessary smarts are easily provided virtually for free by a whole host and great cast of A.N.Others, what other excuses will some of you, and those with more time on their hands than sense in their heads and imagination conjure up to prove they are stagnating and effectively bankrupt of fabulous viable ideas and petrified of the future being terrifying* ..... a natural space of generally, normally unknown dimension and content, privy to One Almighty Few ‽ .
* ... Which can also be easily done by a less than Almighty Few 2, too.
Do y'all get all of that, or does it need to be translated and presented in another language for you to start to understand and be enabled and able to further and deeper comprehend? What other Earthly alien mother tongue would you prefer? There are so many of them.
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