NASA announced Thursday it is hiring a private company to send a golf-cart-size rover to the surface of the moon in 2023 that would roam the lunar south pole in search of water.
The delivery service “is going to provide a steady cadence of payloads and instruments to maximize science at the moon and to advance exploration technology,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for the science mission directorate. “An important part of this work is to find out where the water is on the moon and how much of it there is.”
For years, the moon was believed to be bone dry. But a decade ago, NASA discovered that water in the form of ice exists, especially in the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole of the moon. VIPER, an acronym for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a 1,000-pound rover that would roam over an area of several miles for about 100 days, officials said. It would be outfitted with sensors capable of detecting ice below the surface and a drill able to excavate samples as deep as one meter down. It also could determine the composition and concentration of the water.
Water holds life . Can United Nations receive some samples to investigate ' Nipah' disease ?
Just don't pollute the galaxy with Starbucks cups.