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NASA Extracts Breathable Oxygen on March

Technicians carefully lower the MOXIE instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2019. (NASA via AFP)
Technicians carefully lower the MOXIE instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2019. (NASA via AFP)
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NASA Extracts Breathable Oxygen on March

Technicians carefully lower the MOXIE instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2019. (NASA via AFP)
Technicians carefully lower the MOXIE instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2019. (NASA via AFP)

NASA's Perseverance rover has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen.

"This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars," said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA.

According to AFP, the technology demonstration took place on April 20, and NASA hopes future versions of the used experimental instrument could pave the way for future human Martian explorations.

Not only can the process produce oxygen for future astronauts to breathe, but it could make hauling vast amounts of oxygen over from Earth to use as rocket propellant for the return journey unnecessary. The instrument, dubbed MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), is a golden box the size of a car battery, and is located inside the front right side of the rover.

It uses electricity and chemistry to split carbon dioxide molecules, to produce oxygen and carbon monoxide. In its first run, MOXIE produced 5 grams of oxygen, equivalent to about 10 minutes of breathable oxygen for an astronaut carrying out normal activity.

MOXIE's engineers will now run more tests and try to step up its output. It is designed to be able to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour. Designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MOXIE was built with heat-resistant materials and designed to tolerate the searing temperatures of 800 Celsius required for it to run. A thin gold coating ensures it doesn't radiate its heat and harm the rover.

MIT engineer Michael Hecht said a one-ton version of MOXIE (the currently used instrument weighs 17 kg) could produce the approximately 25 tons of oxygen needed for a rocket to blast off from Mars.

Producing oxygen from Mars' 96 percent carbon dioxide atmosphere might be a more feasible option than extracting ice from under its surface then electrolyzing it to make oxygen. Perseverance landed on the Red Planet on February 18 on a mission to search for signs for past life.

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Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
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Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)

Killer whales have been caught on video breaking off pieces of seaweed to rub and groom each other, scientists announced Monday, in what they said is the first evidence of marine mammals making their own tools.

Humans are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has mastered using tools. Chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish for termites, crows create hooked twigs to catch grubs and elephants swat flies with branches.

Tool-use in the world's difficult-to-study oceans is rarer, however sea otters are known to smash open shellfish with rocks, while octopuses can make mobile homes out of coconut shells.

A study published in the journal Current Biology describes a new example of tool use by a critically endangered population of orcas., AFP reported.

Scientists have been monitoring the southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, between Canada's British Columbia and the US state of Washington, for more than 50 years.

Rachel John, a Masters student at Exeter University in the UK, told a press conference that she first noticed "something kind of weird" going on while watching drone camera footage last year.

The researchers went back over old footage and were surprised to find this behavior is quite common, documenting 30 examples over eight days.

One whale would use its teeth to break off a piece of bull kelp, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.

It would then put the kelp between its body and the body of another whale, and they would rub it between them for several minutes.

The pair forms an "S" shape to keep the seaweed positioned between their bodies as they roll around.

Whales are already known to frolic through seaweed in a practice called "kelping".

They are thought to do this partly for fun, partly to use the seaweed to scrub their bodies to remove dead skin.

The international team of researchers called the new behavior "allokelping," which means kelping with another whale.

They found that killer whales with more dead skin were more likely to engage in the activity, cautioning that it was a small sample size.

Whales also tended to pair up with family members or others of a similar age, suggesting the activity has a social element.

The scientists said it was the first known example of a marine mammal manufacturing a tool.

Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University not involved in the study, praised the research but said it "went a bit too far" in some of its claims.

Bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges to trawl for prey could also be considered to be manufacturing tools, she told AFP.

And it could be argued that other whales known to use nets of bubbles or plumes of mud to hunt represent tool-use benefitting multiple individuals, another first claimed in the paper, Mann said.

Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Whale Research and the study's lead author, said it appeared to be just the latest example of socially learned behavior among animals that could be considered "culture".

But the number of southern resident killer whales has dwindled to just 73, meaning we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.

"If they disappear, we're never getting any of that back," he said.

The whales mainly eat Chinook salmon, whose numbers have plummeted due to overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and other forms of human interference.

The orcas and salmon are not alone -- undersea kelp forests have also been devastated as ocean temperatures rise.

Unless something changes, the outlook for southern resident killer whales is "very bleak," Weiss warned.