Mars has MOXIE! No, not the bitter beverage beloved by Mainers. I’m talking about the the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, affectionately called MOXIE by it’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory. This toaster size piece of equipment is part of the Perseverance Rover which began conducting experiments on Mars in February 2021. MOXIE’s mission is to determine if oxygen can be created on the planet, by converting some of Mars’ thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen.
As the press release on NASA.gov explains, “Mars’ atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. MOXIE works by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. A waste product, carbon monoxide, is emitted into the Martian atmosphere.” Or to put it simpler terms, MOXIE makes oxygen like a tree does. It inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen. During its initial test, it successfully produced about six grams of oxygen per hour, which has scientists very excited. Engineers hope based on these initial tests, they can eventually produce enough oxygen for breathing and propellent that future flights to Mars can sustain a team of four astronauts to be there for a year.
Enough about the technology though, let’s get back to that name, MOXIE. In an interview with GBH, Michael Hecht explained, “I led this team shortly after I moved home back to the Boston area after being in California…Moxie, the soft drink, was invented in Lowell, Massachusetts. It’s now the state drink of Maine. It has local ties, and I’m trying to really embrace my local roots. Again, having come back home.”
As noted on Mars.NASA.gov, in the 1800s when Moxie was promoted as a healthy drink, “people began using moxie to mean vitality and endurance.” Today, “someone with moxie is considered bold and adventurous, hardy and spirited!” Well that certainly describes the team of engineers who made the Perseverance Rover’s mission to Mars possible! In fact, Hecht isn’t the only one with local roots who worked on it.
The Perseverance Rover couldn’t have landed on Mars without the help of the engineers at Fiber Materials Incorporated in Biddeford, Maine which engineered the rover capsules’ heat shield. As Mark Lippold, an applications engineer and FMI’s Project Manager for the Mars 2020 mission, explained in an interview with News Center Maine, when the spacecraft entered Mars’ atmosphere, it experienced peak temperatures, with the heat shield on the bottom of the capsule reaching 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. It was their job to protect it during its fiery entry into the Martian atmosphere.
Once landed the Perseverance Rover began using technology by Brunswick, Maine resident, Dr. Aileen Yingst, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and partners with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Mars rovers. Yingst worked on the Sherlock instrument, which can take stunning close-up images examining even the tiniest grains of sand. As she explained in an interview with New Center Maine, “My job is to take that information and interpret it into a story of how the Martian environment changed from one point to the next.” “All of those grains tell a story,” Yingst said. “You can essentially tell the story of the world in a grain of sand.”
So there you have it, thanks to Mainers’ moxie we can persevere on Mars!
