Visions of humans on Mars are now one step closer to reality. The Perseverance rover, which has already recorded the first sounds from another planet and flown the first helicopter on Mars, recently made another historic first—extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Last month, the rover fired up one of its experiments known as MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. Like the Ingenuity helicopter, this experiment is a technology demonstration, where scientists try something entirely new and never before attempted as part of a larger space mission. 

Inside the small metal box that is MOXIE, Martian air was heated to almost 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, splitting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into one carbon monoxide (CO) and one oxygen atom (O). Mars’s atmosphere is around 96 percent carbon dioxide, so there’s plenty to use there! In its first hour-long test, MOXIE produced 5 grams of oxygen, enough for an astronaut to breathe for 10 minutes. Scientists will run a few more tests with MOXIE during the rest of the rover’s mission, trying to see how much oxygen it can make and how fast.

MOXIE addresses two huge challenges in human space exploration on Mars — finding enough breathable air for astronauts to stay alive, and bringing enough fuel for the rockets to make a return trip to Earth. Oxygen is a key part of rocket fuel, and getting four astronauts off the Martian surface and back to Earth would take a whopping 55,000 pounds of oxygen! Missions to Mars can’t just carry that much oxygen to Mars for the whole trip — it would make the payloads too heavy. MOXIE only weighs about 17 pounds, so future technology like this could help cut down the weight we have to haul with us on trips to Mars. 

Even if Mars won’t ever be a home quite like Earth, this experiment made a huge leap forward for our prospects of visiting the Red Planet.