NASA plans to extract water on the Moon: Here's how

NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years and establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on the lunar surface. To achieve this ambitious endeavour, the agency plans to utilize the resources already present on the Moon, such as water ice, an invaluable resource that can potentially serve as a lifeline for astronauts, supporting both life and fuel.

Under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, Intuitive Machines, the agency's commercial lunar lander partner, will deploy the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) at the lunar South Pole to drill for water. It will be the first in-situ resource utilization demonstration on the lunar surface, which will help identify and assess the abundance and quality of water in an area expected to contain ice.

PRIME-1 comprises two critical instruments:

• The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain or TRIDENT - a drill designed by Honeybee Robotics
• Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo) - a modified commercial mass spectrometer by NASA's industry partner INFICON.

TRIDENT will dig up to three feet deep into the lunar surface, acquiring small samples one bite at a time. The instrument will bring these samples up and deposit them on the lunar surface for further analysis. Thereafter, MSolo will meticulously assess these samples, identifying and measuring the composition of water and other volatile substances emanating from them.

The primary objective of PRIME-1 is to provide invaluable insights into NASA's plans for resource mining on the lunar surface. The successful execution of this mission will establish the foundation for resource utilization on our celestial neighbour.

PRIME-1 is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in late 2023.

We know the Moon has water, so could future astronauts access and make use of it? We're working on it. Once it lands at the lunar South Pole, our Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will robotically sample ice from beneath the lunar surface: https://t.co/iZtHIqqosu pic.twitter.com/XH68YMUUU2

— NASA (@NASA) August 9, 2023