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Mars 2020's MOXIE Laboratory and Principal Investigator

The MOXIE investigation on NASA's Mars 2020 rover will extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. In this image, MOXIE Principal Investigator Michael Hecht, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is in the MOXIE laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

July 15, 2016

One investigation on NASA's Mars 2020 rover will extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. It is called MOXIE, for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. In this image, MOXIE Principal Investigator Michael Hecht, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is in the MOXIE development laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Mars' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. Demonstration of the capability for extracting oxygen from it, under Martian environmental conditions, will be a pioneering step toward how humans on Mars will use the Red Planet's natural resources. Oxygen can be used in the rocket propulsion to launch homeward from Mars, as well as for breathing.

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

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