On July 30, a missile with Persevrance Rover went from Cape Canaveral to Mars. The rover will deliver a whole set of advanced equipment to the Red Planet, including high -resolution chambers and the first Martian helicopter.
Many of these tools are designed to study the possibility of colonization of Mars by people. For example, Persevrance will deliver to the surface of the planet the device Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (Moxie), which will try to extract oxygen from the local atmosphere.
Oxygen is a serious problem for space missions-it takes up a lot of space and is unlikely that colonists will ever be able to deliver a sufficient stock to Mars. And this is not to mention the fact that oxygen is an oxidizing agent and is needed during the flight itself.
It is this problem that is designed to solve moxie. This is a small robot, which, like a tree, collects carbon dioxide, and then electrochemically divides its molecules into CO (carbon monoxide) and atomic oxygen, which then collects in suitable for breathing about2.
The purity of oxygen obtained in this way is 99.6 %. Moxie produces both gases back into the atmosphere, future models will direct about2 In the tanks. The carbon monoxide in this case does not provide a problem, since its volumes are extremely small, and part of it will subsequently combine with atmospheric oxygen, again turning into2.
Moxie will produce oxygen and measure the various parameters of this process throughout the entire Persevrance mission. And he will begin this task immediately after the landing of Rover on Mars February 18, 2021.
Source — Business Insider