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The latest NASA rover, scheduled to land on Mars tomorrow after traveling more than six months in interplanetary space, is carrying with it a special instrument called MOXIE. About the size of a car battery, MOXIE will inhale carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and transform it into a breath of oxygen.
That's the plan, at any rate. On Earth, Maya Nasr and other members of the MOXIE team will be holding their own breath as they wait to see if the instrument they've designed, tested, and helped launch will work after the Perseverance rover touches down on the Martian surface.
Nasr, a PhD student in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has been working on MOXIE since 2016. MOXIE's deployment "was to me always very far away from happening, and now that it's almost there, it's just incredible," she says.
Growing up in Lebanon, Nasr was "passionate about space exploration and answering the big questions in our universe," she recalls. Watching Charles Elachi, a Lebanese-American and former head of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during the 2012 Curiosity rover mission filled her with pride - and a belief that she could also make her mark in space.
"It's always been a dream to be involved in a Martian mission" like Elachi, she says. "Those missions were part of why I applied to MIT in the first place."
Since coming to the United States and MIT as a 16-year-old, Nasr's interests have expanded beyond even Mars. Her...