Mars In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)

See also ISRU for Earth's Moon

Making Oxygen on Mars

Oxygen can be made directly from Mars tenuous atmosphere.

Mars gas mix - CO₂ 95.9%, Ar 2%, N 1.9%, O₂ 0.14% CO 0.06%

MOXIE - NASA's "Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment"

Launch to Mars 2020

MOXIE collects CO2 from the Martian atmosphere, then electrochemically splits the CO2 molecules into O2 and CO.

Caltech

Gerald Sanders from NASA-JSC discuss the in-situ resource utilization on Mars at the "ISRU on Mars"

ISRU: State of the Art and System-Level Considerations