Oxygen maker to be sent to Mars in 2020

 

 

In the original Total Recall movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger makes Mars habitable again by activating a machine that converts the planet's ice caps into oxygen.

 

Now, European scientists have built a similar oxygen-making device in preparation for colonizing the planet for real.

 

Danish researchers are building a machine that will convert carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere into oxygen, in preparation for humans arriving on the red planet. The prototype will be sent to Mars with the NASA Mars 2020 mission.

 

“We’re going to build a small instrument that will generate oxygen on Mars,” said Morten Bo Madsen, head of the Mars group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. “It will be the prototype of a much larger ‘factory’ that will provide astronauts with oxygen at some point in the future.”

 

The project, named MOXIE (Mars OXygen In situ resource utilisation Experiment), aims to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen by splitting carbon dioxide molecules apart. The end product will be oxygen molecules and the byproduct will be carbon monoxide. Since Mars’ atmosphere is around 96% carbon dioxide, there’s plenty of raw material.

 

The energy required to split apart the molecules will come from a radio thermal generator (RTG) which generate electricity from the heat given off my radioactive plutonium.

 

“Having the ability to produce oxygen on the surface of Mars is a great step forward when it comes to mankind's future exploration of Mars,” said Michael Meyer, a leading scientist at NASA's Mars Exploration Program, in an interview with Space.com.

 

The end goal is to build an oxygen factory on Mars, around 100 times the size of the first MOXIE prototype. — Bea Montenegro/TJD, GMA News