GPL Presents: Oxygen on Mars! with Piyush Khopkar

Join the Greenfield Public Library, in collaboration with the Wayland Public Library, on Tuesday, September 19, at 7 p.m., for Oxygen on Mars! With Piyush Khopkar, a Zoom discussion about the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment.

The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) is an instrument onboard NASA’S Perseverance rover, currently exploring Mars. In 2021, MOXIE successfully produced oxygen from the carbon dioxide that comprises ~95% of the Martian atmosphere, demonstrating, for the first time, the ability to harvest and process existent resources on other planetary bodies. A scaled -up MOXIE would contribute to sustainable human exploration of Mars, providing both life support and the oxygen required for a rocket to transport astronauts back to Earth.

Piyush Khopkar is part of the MOXIE and the Mars 2020 – Perseverance Rover mission team, developing the tools to analyze mission data. Piyush has served as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador since 2016, joyfully sharing the excitement of space exploration through public presentations and outreach.

This program is free, but registration is required. Register for the Zoom link at: tinyurl.com/wfpl-mars

This program will not be recorded.

This program, organized by the Wayland Public Library, is free and open to the public.