Recent observational studies of core-collapse supernovae suggest only stars with zero-age main sequence masses smaller than 16 – 18 M _ { \odot } explode when they are red supergiants , producing type IIP supernovae .
This may imply that more massive stars produce other types of supernovae or they simply collapse to black holes without giving rise to bright supernovae .
This failed supernova hypothesis can lead to significantly inefficient oxygen production because oxygen abundantly produced in inner layers of massive stars with zero-age main sequence masses around 20 – 30 M _ { \odot } might not be ejected into the surrounding interstellar space .
We first assume an unspecified population of oxygen injection events related to massive stars and obtain a model-independent constraint on how much oxygen should be released in a single event and how frequently such events should happen .
We further carry out one-box galactic chemical enrichment calculations with different mass ranges of massive stars exploding as core-collapse supernovae .
Our results suggest that the model assuming that all massive stars with 9 – 100 M _ { \odot } explode as core-collapse supernovae is still most appropriate in explaining the solar abundances of oxygen and iron and their enrichment history in the Galaxy .
The oxygen mass in the Galaxy is not explained when assuming that only massive stars with zero-age main sequence masses in the range of 9–17 M _ { \odot } , contribute to the galactic oxygen enrichment .
This finding implies that a good fraction of stars more massive than 17 M _ { \odot } should eject their oxygen layers in either supernova explosions or some other mass loss processes .