An Instrument That Might Pave the Way for Future Human Explorers on the Red Planet Is Installed on the Mars 2020 Rover...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

This Is One Mars Rover With MOXIE (News Release - April 5)

Members of NASA's Mars 2020 project install the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) into the chassis of NASA's next Mars rover. MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing. The car-battery-sized instrument does this by collecting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Martian atmosphere and electrochemically splitting the carbon dioxide molecules into oxygen and carbon monoxide molecules. The oxygen is then analyzed for purity before being vented back out to the Martian atmosphere along with the carbon monoxide and other exhaust products.

The image was taken on March 20, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 Cleanroom at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory