NASA has finally revealed the location where it’s planning to probe the Moon for water ice. This will make things clear whether our closest celestial body is capable of supporting a long-term human presence.
A robotic lander will take to the lunar South Pole near the Shackleton crater, a region scientists believe could hold significant stores of water ice beneath the surface. The experiment will drill the surface for 10 days after launching next year.
Carrying three groundbreaking demonstrations
The lander will also carry three different technology demonstrations, including the Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), a drill that will pierce the Moon’s surface to look for ice. A small robot named Micro-Nova, created by Intuitive Machines will allow PRIME-1 to be moved around the lunar surface.
“PRIME-1 is permanently attached to Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, and finding a landing location where we might discover ice within three feet of the surface was challenging,” said Jackie Quinn, PRIME-1 project manager at NASA.
“While there is plenty of sunlight to power the payloads, the surface gets too warm to sustain ice within reach of the PRIME-1 drill,” she added. “We needed to find a ‘goldilocks’ site that gets just enough sunlight to meet mission requirements while also being a safe place to land with good Earth communications.”
Bringing Moon closer to Earth
After Micro-Nova confirms a suitable spot, the PRIME-1 drill will try to dig up to three feet into the surface to extract lunar soil for water analysis. An onboard mass spectrometer will check if any volatile gasses escape from the samples.
Micro-Nova can carry two-pound payload up to 1.5 miles for analysis, this will give PRIME-1 enough room to finalize a good site to probe for ice. The payload will also feature an experiment by Nokia of America that will aim to set up a 4G/LTE communications network on the Moon.
It could be another disruptive demonstration that could bring the Moon closer to us than ever. If everything goes as planned, astronauts might be able to beam HD videos to Earth from the moon, according to the space agency.
