NASA's Artemis Mission Harness Lunar Resources Through PRIME

NASA's Artemis missions will establish the first long-term human presence on the lunar surface.

Residing and conducting activities on the lunar terrain will require using resources that are already present there, which can be used for life support and fuel, wrote Emily Furfaro of NASA.

"Our partner in commercial lunar landers, Intuitive Machines, will deploy the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1, or PRIME-1, to the lunar south pole. The purpose of PRIME-1 is to drill for water on the lunar surface."

The article stated that PRIME-1 is the confluence of two instruments: a drill christened Trident, developed by Honeybee Robotics, which stands for The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, and the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations, named MSolo. The latter is a commercially available mass spectrometer from our industry collaborator, INFICON, adapted to function in the challenging space environment.

Trident will progressively bore into the lunar soil, gathering small samples that will then be deposited onto the lunar surface. Subsequently, MSolo will evaluate these samples upon arrival to determine and quantify the composition of water and other volatiles emitted from them, elucidated Furfaro.

PRIME-1's mission is to guide NASA's strategies for resource extraction on the lunar surface and to enhance mission operations for an upcoming NASA lunar rover mission named VIPER, as delineated in the article.

"So, how will we extract water on the moon? The PRIME-1 mission is laying the groundwork for future resource utilisation on the moon. This is an essential element for the success of forthcoming Artemis missions, in addition to advancing human exploration within our solar system," highlighted the article.

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The above article has been published from a wire source with minimal modifications to the headline and text.