NASA wants to create oxygen in the golden month. Photo: Ari Saputra

Jakarta - The United States National Space Agency NASA, plans to create oxygen on the moon. For that, they will use gold as one of its materials The report quoted from the Tech Times mentioned, NASA is looking for a way to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen using equipment attached to one of the rover that will be launched to the Moon, a box made of gold.

This gold-made tool is called NASA as Mars Oxygen In-Stu Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). The idea came from MOXIE's project investigator chief, Michael Hecht. Why the name contains the word Mars, because MOXIE is a test model to help future Mars explorers produce oxygen from carbon dioxide on Mars.

 "When sending humans to Mars, we want them to return safely, and to do that, they need a rocket to fly off the planet. Liquid oxygen propellant is something we can make there and not to be brought with us. One idea would be to bring an empty oxygen tank and fill it on Mars,  "he said.

MOXIE is made of gold to minimize the impact with electronic boxes inside the space rover. In addition, gold has a low emisivity or radiating power. That is, this material does not emit heat and it is useful to help him survive in the hot temperatures of Mars.

According to Jim Lewis, one of the MOXIE engineers, this tool will work by injecting energy into anode and cathode. Oxygen will be separated from carbon dioxide which allows it to be extracted to produce its own oxygen.

 "This will ensure a reduced impact on the nearest electronic box of the rover. Gold does not emit heat effectively, because its emptiness is very low,  "Lewis said.

The NASA Rover is scheduled to be launched to the moon in July 2020. The Rover was developed to extract the material obtained on Mars to be brought again to Earth in 2031. The extracted samples will later be used as research materials to obtain additional information about the still mysterious red Planet.