NASA will conduct its first mining experiment on the Moon

A ridge not far from Shackleton Crater at the south pole of the Luna has been chosen by the NASA as the target of an ice extraction experiment connected to a robotic lander.

This mission, developed jointly with Intuitive Machines, will be launched in late 2022.

NASA data from spacecraft orbiting the Moon indicate that this location, known as the “Shackleton connecting ridge,” area receives enough sunlight to power a lander for a mission of approximately 10 days. , while providing a clear line of sight to Earth for constant communications. It is also near a small crater, which is great for a robotic excursion.

These conditions offer the best chance of success for the three on-board technology demonstrations. This includes NASA-funded Experiment 1 (PRIME-1), which consists of the simulation paired with a mass spectrometer, a 4G / LTE communications network developed by Nokia of America Corporation, and Micro-Nova, a hopper robot. dropdown developed by Intuitive Machines.

“PRIME-1 is permanently connected to Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, and finding a landing site where we could ”, Dr. Jackie Quinn, project manager of the PRIME-1 project at NASA’s Kennedy Center, said in a statement.

“While there is a lot of sunlight to power the payloads, the surface gets too hot to hold the ice within reach of the PRIME-1 drill. We needed to find a ‘goldilocks’ site that would get enough sunlight to meet the mission requirements and at the same time be a safe place to land with good ground communications. “

To select this final landing location, experts from NASA, Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Nokia, and Intuitive Machines created maps of the lunar surface using data from lunar remote sensing.

After landing, the PRIME-1 drill, known as the Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT), will attempt to drill down to a meter deep, extract lunar soil, called regolith, and deposit it on the surface for analysis of the Water. PRIME-1’s other instrument, the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo), will measure volatile gases that easily escape from TRIDENT excavated material.

PRIME-1 will be the first demo of. Advancing these types of technologies is critical to establishing a strong, long-term presence in deep space, including on the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis missions. Simply operating and drilling on the rugged lunar surface will provide engineers with valuable information for future lunar missions, such as the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) mission, which is scheduled to land at the lunar South Pole in late 2023. NASA reports in a statement.

While PRIME-1 will investigate resources beneath the lunar surface, Nokia will set out to test its space-hardened 4G / LTE network. A small rover developed by Lunar Outpost will venture more than a mile from the Nova-C lander and test Nokia’s wireless network at various distances. The rover will communicate with a base station located at Nova-C, and the lander will communicate the data to Earth. This demonstration could pave the way for This includes communications and even high-definition video streaming from astronauts to base stations, vehicles to base stations, and more.

Nearby, Intuitive Machines’ Micro-Nova will aim to deploy on the surface and jump into a nearby crater to acquire images and scientific data before jumping. Then it will send the data to Nova-C. Micro-Nova can carry a 900 gram payload over 1.5 miles to access lunar craters and enable high-resolution survey of the lunar surface. This demonstration could help pave the way for additional commercial lunar exploration services. In the future, scientists may have the opportunity to equip a hopper with their own small scientific instruments, such as cameras, seismometers, lunar measurement systems, and more.

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