Among the major innovations of 2021, the generation of the first grams of oxygen on Mars by a demonstrator attached to Perseverance is a real revolution.
© Nasa / AFP
By Guerric Poncet
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FAttached to the Perseverance robot which landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, the Moxie demonstrator produced oxygen from carbon dioxide, the majority in the atmosphere of the red planet: a great first. True, it took a full day for it to produce 5 grams of oxygen (O2), or enough to make an astronaut breathe for… ten minutes, but the feat is no less formidable. “By increasing the size of the equipment, we will be able to produce a lot more”, explains Alexis Paillet, head of the Spaceship project at the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes). This division of the French space agency aims to “find all the technological niches to prepare a future base on the Moon or on Mars, by 2040 or 2050”, details its …
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