Real world Living off the land
Bringing everything from Earth is extremely expensive. "In-situ resource utilization", or ISRU, means using what is already there. Oxygen is a top priority: people need it to breathe, and rockets need large amounts of it to burn their fuel.
Real world Making oxygen on Mars, for real
Mars' thin air is mostly carbon dioxide. NASA's Perseverance rover carried a lunchbox-sized experiment called MOXIE that heated Martian air and split carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide using electricity. Between 2021 and 2023 it ran 16 times and produced 122 grams of oxygen, about what a small dog breathes in ten hours, at its best making 12 grams an hour. It proved the idea works on Mars.
Possible future A full-size factory
A future factory would be hundreds of times bigger, running for months before astronauts arrive to fill tanks for breathing and for the trip home. On the Moon, oxygen could be released from rock by heating it with chemicals or electricity, since oxygen makes up roughly 40 to 45 percent of lunar soil by weight, locked inside minerals. These factories would need lots of steady power.
Art In this artwork
This illustration shows an industrial building with chimneys, tanks and pipes. Here we imagine it as a factory making oxygen.
Look closer
- Find the chimneys and storage tanks.
- Where would the oxygen be stored?
Think about it
- Why would astronauts want the oxygen factory running before they arrive?
- What else could be made from local materials?
- What would happen to the settlement if the factory broke down?
Key words
- ISRU
- In-situ resource utilization: using local resources.
- Carbon dioxide
- A gas made of carbon and oxygen; most of Mars' air.
- Oxidizer
- The oxygen a rocket burns with its fuel.
Use it in class
- How could humans live on Mars? (Explainer, grades 5-12)
Sources
The real-world facts on this page are based on these sources:
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) results, 2021-2023
- NASA, "In-Situ Resource Utilization" (using local resources on the Moon and Mars)
