NASA Made Oxygen on Mars for the First Time

A box the size of a car battery sat inside a Mars rover and did what no machine had done off Earth. It made breathable oxygen.

Mars air is about 96 percent carbon dioxide and barely there, under one percent of Earth's pressure. It could not keep a person alive for a single breath.

The device was called MOXIE. It pulled in that thin air, heated it to around 800 degrees Celsius, and stripped the oxygen off the carbon dioxide. Out came pure, breathable oxygen, made from another planet's air. Between 2021 and 2023 it ran sixteen times across changing seasons, at its best making about twelve grams an hour.

In total, MOXIE made about 122 grams of oxygen, close to what a small dog breathes in ten hours. Tiny. But it proved future astronauts might never have to carry their air from Earth. They could make it after they arrive.

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