NASA'S perseverance rover has successfully converted carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure breathable oxygen, the US space agency said on Wednesday. 

The extraction of oxygen was literally out of thin air on Mars (Mars atmosphere is 1% of the earth's atmosphere) 

Click here to read about world's first space hotel

In its first activation the device called MOXIE (Mars oxygen in-setu resource utilization experiment) produced nearly about 5 grams of oxygen, which is equivalent to roughly 10 minutes worth of breathing for an astronaut, NASA (national Aeronautics space administration)  said, 

Divice is MOXIE (Mars oxygen in-situ resource utilization experiment) 
 image credit- NASA / JPL-caltech


How does the device work? 

The device works on the principle of electrolysis, which uses extreme heat to separate oxygen atoms from molecules of carbon dioxide, which consist of about 95% of the atmosphere on Mars and the remaining 5% of Mars atmosphere primarily consist of molecular nitrogen and argon. 

The oxygen exists on Mars in negligible trace amounts (nearly 0.1%) 

Oxygen is important for both as a sustainable source of breathable air for astronauts and as a necessary ingredients for Rocket fuel to fly them to earth. 

How much oxygen is required? 

The volume required for launching rocket into space from Mars are particularly daunting. 

According to NASA, getting four astronauts off the martian surface would take about 7 metric tons of rocket fuel combined with 25 metric tons of oxygen, 

On the other hand transporting a one ton oxygen conversion machine to Mars is more practicle than trying to haul 25 tons of oxygen in tanks from earth. 

Astronauts living and working on Mars would require perhaps one metric ton of oxygen (1000 kg) between them to last on entire year. 

Divice MOXIE is designed  to generate up to 10 grams per hour as a proof of concept,  and Scientists plan to run the machine at least another nine times over the next two years under different condition and speeds. 

NASA has also successfully take off and landing of a miniature robot helicopter (ingenuity) in Mars

The main objective of perseverance mission on Mars is Astrobiology including the search for signs of ancient micrabial life, 

The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate and the first mission to collect and cache martian rock and regolith