NASA picks Intuitive Machines to land an ice-mining drill on the moon

NASA has picked Intuitive Machines to raise the PRIME-1 ice-mining experiment to the moon’s south pole in December 2022 on the firm’s internal most Nova-C lander.

(Image: © Intuitive Machines)

NASA has tapped the Houston-essentially based fully firm Intuitive Machines to land an ice-mining drill on the south pole of the moon in 2022. 

Beneath the deal, NASA pays Intuitive Machines $47 million to raise the distance company’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME-1) to the moon’s south pole. It’s miles the first-ever mission designed to reap water ice from internal the moon, NASA officers mentioned. Moon ice is a resource NASA hopes to use underneath its Artemis program, which objectives to approach astronauts to the moon in 2024.

“The records we’ll form from PRIME-1 and various science devices and abilities demonstrations we’re sending to the lunar flooring will portray our Artemis missions with astronauts and assist us higher realize how we are able to fetch a sustainable lunar presence,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s companion administrator for science missions, mentioned in an Oct. 16 assertion. 

Intuitive Machines will flee the 88-lb. (40 kilograms) PRIME-1 payload to the moon in December 2022 on its NOVA-C lander as phase of NASA’s Business Lunar Payload Products and services program, or CLPS. The firm is one of several firms NASA has chosen underneath CLPS to flee robotic missions to the moon. 

“Laying the muse to approach folks to the moon is an wonderful honor and even greater disclose,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus mentioned in a separate assertion. “At Intuitive Machines, we’re hungry for the pursuit of these mettlesome missions that can redefine what a tiny industry is ready to.”

PRIME-1 will use its drill to dig about 3 toes (1 meter) underneath the lunar flooring to see for buried water ice. The experiment entails a mass spectrometer to measure how powerful ice from PRIME-1’s sample is misplaced from sublimation, the technique by which a solid turns without delay into vapor, which happens in space. 

“PRIME-1 will give us mammoth perception into the sources on the moon and tricks on how to extract them,” mentioned Jim Reuter, NASA’s companion administrator for space abilities, in the NASA assertion.

A version of PRIME-1’s lunar drill and mass spectrometer will be ancient on NASA’s subsequent robotic moon rover, known as VIPER, which is planned to starting up in 2023. That mission will additionally flee to the lunar south pole to see for water ice. 

PRIME-1’s flight would perhaps perhaps also merely now not be the first moon mission for Intuitive Machines. 

Earlier this one year, the firm announced plans to starting up its first Nova-C moon lander in 2021 to a space on the moon is understood as the “Ocean of Storms.” That mission will land in Vallis Schröteri, the finest valley on the moon, and elevate five NASA experiments and some industrial payloads to the lunar flooring underneath a $79.5 million contract with the U.S. space company.

Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or apply him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Fb and Instagram.