But to get water, we would have to travel to the far north or south to find ice, or to mine for ice buried deep in the ground. Using water to make oxygen on Mars would be a great idea if we had easy access to the water. The two devices, the fuel cell and the electrolyzer, are nearly identical devices, operated in a very different way. A hydrogen cell of this type, in contrast, would start with the water and use electricity to turn it back into hydrogen and oxygen. The most common example is the hydrogen fuel cell, used in some automobiles, which combines hydrogen and oxygen to make water and electricity. In a fuel cell, fuel and oxygen react to make energy (electricity) and a stable chemical product. MOXIE is an example of a 'solid oxide electrolyzer cell,' which is a fuel cell that runs in reverse. That destructive process is called 'coking.' The carbon deposit itself is called – coke. Whenever we run MOXIE, we need to be very careful with the settings to make sure we only produce carbon monoxide (CO), and not pure carbon, which would ruin it. On Mars, MOXIE is the first to use carbon dioxide to make – well, anything at all. to use carbon dioxide (CO 2) to make a beverage fizzy. According to some accounts, the Moxie company was the first in the U.S. The connection with soft drinks doesn't end there. You can still buy Moxie in New England, and it's considered the official drink of the state of Maine. Haystack Observatory where the MOXIE principal investigator works. The soft drink, Moxie, was invented in the late 1800s in Lowell, Massachusetts, not far from the M.I.T. The word 'moxie,' used to describe someone with spunk and audacity, came from the soft drink of the same name.

ISRU is another acronym, In Situ Resource Utilization, which is a technical way of describing what most of us call 'living off the land.' MOXIE stands for the Mars OXygen ISRU Experiment. To produce oxygen from the Martian carbon-dioxide atmosphereĪbout 37.7 pounds (17.1 kilograms) on Earthģ7.7 pounds on Earth, 14.14 pounds on MarsĪpproximately one hour of oxygen (O 2) production per experiment, scheduled intermittently over the duration of the mission. MOXIE will test a way for future explorers to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for burning fuel and breathing. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, is helping NASA prepare for human exploration of Mars. MOXIE Lowered into Rover: Technicians in the clean room are carefully lowering the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover.

Tanks vs robots