As of December 2022, the U.S. Space Agency, at the initiative of the agency’s commercial lunar loading service, has awarded about $ 47 million to a direct robot in Houston and delivered it to the moon with a mass spectrometer. The delivery of the polar resource ice drilling experiment, called PRIME-1, will help NASA search for ice in the South Pole and collect ice from the ground for the first time.
“We will continue to select vendors from our CLPS vendor pool to the lunar surface, which is an example of our work to integrate the business intelligence into our lunar efforts,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the NASA’s director of science and technology. “The information we are sending to PRIME-1 and other science and technology tools and technology demonstrations that we are sending to the surface of the moon informs us of our mission with Artemis astronauts and helps us better understand how we can build the sustainability of the moon.”
PRIME-1 landed on the moon and drilled 3 feet (about 1 meter) above the ground. It measures the amount of ice in the sample when the lunar environment evaporates from the ice hardness in the vacuum. PRIME-1 maneuvers and public spectrum monitoring devices or MSolo versions will also fly on VIPER, and mobile robots will also be searching for ice at the lunar pole in 2023. NASA lands the first woman and the next man. The following year is the South Pole of the Moon.
“PRIME-1 gives us a tremendous insight into the resources of the moon and how to get them out,” said Jim Ruther, deputy director of the NASA’s Washington Department of Space Technology (STMD). “Sending this cargo to the moon is a terrific example of the breakthrough technology of our science and technology community, along with our business partners, to develop breakthrough technology to achieve a number of goals on the moon.”
STMD Game Transformation Development Fund PRIME-1. Beehive robots in Pasadena, California are developing ice drilling exercises. The Kennedy Space Center in Florida is partnering with INFICON in Syracuse, New York, to develop a mass spectrometer.
PRIME-1 data helps scientists understand the planet’s resources. PRIME-1 contributes to NASA’s search for water in the lunar pole, which supports the agency’s plan to build a sustainable human existence on the moon by the end of the decade. The early use of PRIME-1 exercises and MSolo will help increase the likelihood of these cargoes operating reliably on VIPER’s mobile platform over the next year.
Through the CLPS initiative, NASA will be able to tap commercial partners and quickly land scientific and technological demonstrations on the moon with its first flight next year. An important part of NASA’s Artemis program is the CLPS flight, which will support a series of robotic lunar activities before humans return to the moon, as well as during this decade.
