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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 27 2019, @08:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the Prospected-by-VIPER! dept.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has announced that the space agency is planning to send a rover to the moon in 2022 to search for water ice.

In a speech at the 70th International Astronautical Congress, Bridenstine said the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission would look for ice on or below the surface of the moon at its south pole, a key resource for future human missions.

"We actually have a mission right now that I'm very pleased to announce, it's called VIPER," he said. VIPER would fly to a moon on a commercial lander through the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

"VIPER is going to rover on the south pole of the moon and VIPER is going to assess where the water ice is," he continued. "We're going to characterize the water ice, and ultimately drill and find out just how the water ice is embedded in the regolith on the moon."

The mission will take advantage of the extended sunlight of the lunar day at the pole to last for 100 days as the rover drills (up to one meter) looking for ice.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @01:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @01:03AM (#912584)

    Interesting, but still looks like vaporware at this point in time. Note that even this process mentions using compressed CO2 to blow the rock dust out of the hole, so it still needs chip extraction.