One of the many pesky barriers to humans freely exploring and inhabiting Mars is the planet's lack of oxygen. Luckily, NASA's Perseverance rover can help.
Using an instrument dubbed MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), the rover successfully took carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and converted it into oxygen, NASA announced on Tuesday. NASA said it plans to conduct more MOXIE tests, but did not specify when.
MOXIE ran its first test for roughly an hour, producing just under six grams of oxygen. That's enough to keep an astronaut going for about 10 minutes, the agency explained. It won't keep someone alive for long, but it's a key step forward in exploring Mars. Read more...
More about Nasa, Mars, Science, and Space
Source : http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/s--arfNObFI/
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