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NASA has been planning to send a robotic rover to the polar regions of the Moon for years. Water ice trapped at the bottom of the craters could be a boon for future visiting astronauts; It provides water to drink, air to breathe, and rocket fuel to propel them to Earth or even farther into the solar system.

Now, NASA has identified the crater that the rover – the Polar Reconnaissance Rover to Study Flyers, or VIPER – will spend nearly 100 days exploring when it arrives in a few years.

VIPER will land near the moon’s south pole, on the western rim of the 45-mile-wide Nobile crater, which is formed when something hits the moon. Near the poles, the sun is lowering on the horizon, and the bottoms of the craters, which lie in perpetual shadow, are among the coldest places in the solar system.

“The rover will get up close and personal with the lunar soil, even several feet deep, which will totally help us redefine what we know about our moon,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division. Press conference by phone on Monday.

Because VIPER is powered by solar panels, it can’t go very far into the dark – its batteries allow it to run for up to 50 hours in the dark – and it needs a direct line of light with Earth to communicate. NASA officials said the Nobile site is a favorable location because the terrain is variable but soft enough for the rover to navigate.

The VIPER is roughly the size of a golf cart – 5 feet long, 5 feet wide and about 8 feet high. Weighing around 1,000 pounds, it will carry a range of tools, including a drill that will allow it to extract samples from below the surface.

NASA officials, however, admit they do not have conclusive data on the significant amount of water in the Nobile area. Regardless of whether there is water there, the VIPER mission’s findings will provide a comparison between what is measured from orbit and what actually happens on lunar soil.

“If we find that there’s no water anywhere we look, that’s a fundamental discovery,” said Anthony Colaprete, the mission’s lead scientist, “and we’re going to scratch our heads and rewrite the textbooks.”

Water ice is an important resource for lunar exploration, but its exact location and nature on the moon are unknown. It may be frozen on the surface or buried underground. It may be pure water or it may be due to minerals. VIPER’s mission is to solve this, and such information will help plan Artemis, NASA’s program to return astronauts to the moon.

Last year, NASA signed a contract with Pittsburgh Astrobotic Technology Inc. to get VIPER to the moon in late 2023. announced the signing of a contract with The cost to build and operate VIPER is $433.5 million, and NASA pays Astrobotic an additional $226 million. send it to the surface of the moon.

VIPER is one of a series of robotic missions that NASA is funding as part of. revival of interest in the moon. The first, CAPSTONE, could be launched into lunar orbit from New Zealand next month with a small rocket built by. company Rocket Lab.

For VIPER and other missions to the moon, NASA takes a page from the successful playbook. hiring private companies to transport cargo and then astronauts to the International Space Station. In the past, the space agency had to develop the landing system for VIPER, but now it depends on private companies like Astrobotic for this service.

A crucial milestone for the Artemis program will be the launch of an Orion space capsule designed to take astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit. There will be no one on this flight; this is an Orion test and NASA’s massive Space Launch System. NASA officials say it may still take off later this year, but the schedule is likely to shift to 2022.

First landing of astronauts on the moon With the help of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, will take place in the third mission, which is still scheduled for 2024 but is likely to be delayed.

The robotic VIPER navigator is to get there first.

And he may not be alone. Tasks to be started by Chinese and Russia, potentially collaborating, are also looking to the Moon’s south pole to study water ice.

While the Soviet Union sent two rovers in the 1970s and China Sent two since 2013, including in 2019 as part of first mission to land on the far side of the moon, VIPER will be NASA’s first robotic moon rover.

NASA actually has a small mission called. Moon Pioneer i.e. making global maps of lunar water from orbit. The mission’s principal investigator, Bethany L. Ehlmann, said navigating VIPER to where water is present would be an eye in the sky, increasing the likelihood of a successful mission.

However, the Lunar Trailblazer is not scheduled to launch until 2025 with another spacecraft. This will be long after VIPER stops working.

An earlier launch date will require a new ride for the Trailblazer, adding to the mission’s price tag.

At the press conference, Dr. Glaze said that while the spacecraft will be ready in early 2023 before VIPER goes to the moon, there are no plans to push the launch date of the Lunar Trailblazer forward.