Methods of delivering oxygen to people on Mars in the future
Once it reaches
to deep-space travel and exploration, oxygen is one of the most imperative features
in the fusion. Humans breathe it to live and rockets burn it to fly.
Recently,
a team of scientists at MIT is working on a machine that could make oxygen on
Mars. This kind of a set up could play a major part in future manned missions
to Mars.
According
to the studies, the atmosphere on Mars contains of 96% carbon dioxide and less
than 0.2% oxygen, (Earth has about 21% oxygen). If astronauts tried breathing
the air on Mars, they would speedily asphyxiate.
But
hauling tanks of breathable oxygen to Mars takes up precious space that could
otherwise store food and scientific instruments. That's where the Mars Oxygen
In situ resource utilization Experiment (MOXIE for short) comes in.
Mars 2020
Rover concept designed in 2012. NASA
Making oxygen for the first time
Last
August, NASA publicized that MOXIE, along with six other scientific
instruments, would get a seat on the Mars rover 2020 mission .NASA's rover
mission to follow up on Curiosity's work. Additionally, the Mars 2020 rover
will generate electric power the same way as Curiosity, which would power all
six instruments on board, including MOXIE.
The mission is estimated to cost between $1 and
$2 billion and, if fully sponsored, would launch between July and
September of 2020 and land between 150 to 300 days later.
Reducing cost
The MOXIE
is just the beginning. If this rover-based test is progressive, future missions
could send bigger versions of MOXIE to Mars.
According
to Michael Hecht, the main aim is to construct a 100-time scale of MOXIE and team
hope that in the year 2030s it will organize liquid oxygen tanks.
Those
tanks will then store oxygen for breathing and rocket fuel by astronauts to get
them back from the surface of Mars into space in order to come home.
Making
oxygen on Mars instead of bringing it along for the deep-space road trip would significantly
reduce the cost of future manned missions to Mars.
How it works
As MOXIE does, this is principally to run alike a fuel
cell in contrary. In order to work, fuel cells adapt a type of fuel, such as
gasoline, into electricity over a chemical reaction that frequently involves
the presence of oxygen.
Yet, as
oxygen is so rare on Mars, MOXIE will in its place to start with electricity, formed
by an isolated machine, and practice it to abstract carbon dioxide in the air
to produce breathable oxygen.
