MARS 2020 Perseverance rover, including MOXIE
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech We're going to Mars!

MOXIE: headed to Mars!

July 30, 2020
Categories: Christopher Eckert , Jason SooHoo , John McClean , John Swoboda , Michael Hecht , Space Technology
MOXIE will convert CO2 in the Mars atmosphere into oxygen.

Led by Principal Investigator Michael Hecht of MIT Haystack Observatory, MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment, where ISRU means In-Situ Resource Utilization) is one of the instruments on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, launched Thursday, July 30, 2020.

In collaboration with MIT AeroAstro and JPL, MOXIE teams have designed an instrument that will act like a small tree, demonstrating a way to produce oxygen by converting CO2 in the Mars atmosphere.

MOXIE (aka “The Oxygenator”) is a 1:200 scale model of an ISRU plant for a human mission. It ingests atmospheric CO2 and produces propellant-grade O2, intended primarily for Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) propellant — but also as a way to supplement fuel and habitat oxygen in the future.

For more, see MOXIE: Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment, and “With Perseverance and a little MOXIE, MIT is going to Mars,” from MIT News.