NASA picks partner to land water-measuring technology on the moon - Fox Business

NASA has picked Houston-based Intuitive Machines to land a water-measuring technology on the moon.

The space agency has awarded Intuitive Machines an approximately $47 million contract to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the lunar surface by December 2022.

The moon’s polar ice caps have been garnering plenty of attention in the build-up to the Artemis mission, with NASA looking to use them to support a long-term presence on the lunar surface.

NASA chose Intuitive Machines to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the moon (NASA).

The deal with Intuitive Machines is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

“PRIME-1 will land on the Moon and drill up to 3 feet (approximately 1 meter) below the surface,” said NASA, in its statement.

“It will measure with a mass spectrometer how much ice in the sample is lost to sublimation as the ice turns from a solid to a vapor in the vacuum of the lunar environment.”.

Versions of the PRIME-1 drill and the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo) will also fly on the VIPER mobile robot that will search for ice at the lunar South Pole in 2023, according to NASA.