Scientists literally pulled this out of thin air.

Engineers at MIT and the University of California Berkeley have designed a system, powered by sunlight, that can turn air into liters of drinkable water.

This box has the potential to help drought-stricken communities, desert explorers or — someday — astronauts traveling to dry, dusty planets. The report was published April 13 in Science.

“One vision for the future is to have water off-grid, where you have a device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household,” Omar Yaghi, one of the senior authors of the study, told Berkeley News. He referred to this vision as “personalized water.”

To harvest the H20, the system uses a special material called a metal-organic framework, or MOF, which was provided by the scientists at UC Berkeley. This material resembles a really fine powder and its tiny pores can absorb and trap air. When sunlight is added, water molecules inside the trapped air get released and condensed.

Using just 2.2 pounds of MOF, the device can harvest 2.8 liters (about 3 quarts) of water out of the air over a 12-hour period.

“We wanted to demonstrate that if you are cut off somewhere in the desert, you could survive because of this device,” said Yaghi. “A person needs about a Coke can of water per day. That is something one could collect in less than an hour with this system.”