Over on Mars, NASA has been generating oxygen. That’s very cool!

When the Perseverance rover touched down on Mars in February 2021, one of the instruments it carried was a 40-pound, microwave-sized device called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, aka MOXIE.

MOXIE has been working over the last 2.5 years to extract the trace amounts of oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere, which is mostly carbon dioxide (95%) and nitrogen (3%). On its 16th and final run on August 7, the instrument made 9.8 grams of oxygen, bringing the total to 122 grams.

However, the current results from MOXIE aren’t exactly jaw-dropping on their face. In fact, the headline “NASA generates enough oxygen on Mars for a small dog to breathe for ten hours” sounds more than a little ridiculous. In truth, however, this system has worked even better than expected. In the future, it’s possible that large dogs could breath for weeks, months, or even years on Mars. Also, humans, I suppose.