MOXIE is a payload on the Mars 2020 rover developed to demonstrate In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technologies to enable propellant and consumable oxygen production from the Martian environment. Additionally MOXIE will provide insight into the atmospheric dust characteristics to understand its effects on the operation of surface systems. MOXIE collects CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and electrochemically splits the CO2 molecules into O2 and CO. The O2 is then analyzed for purity before being vented back out to the Mars atmosphere along with the CO and other exhaust products.

NASA's Mars exploration is dependent on systems being able to provide required resources utilizing the Martian environment. MOXIE addresses key knowledge gaps in oxygen production that will be required to safely sustain a human presence on Mars.

In the broadest context, the purpose of MOXIE was to serve as a springboard to an eventual full-scale system. More narrowly, the flight implementation of MOXIE was intended to demonstrate that the performance of the technology on Mars is consistent with operation in the laboratory, and to develop the capability to operate safely and productively in a truly remote configuration. The laboratory implementation, in addition to validating operational sequences prior to running them on Mars, was intended to allow experiments that could not be accomplished on Mars but that would be of importance for development of a next generation system.