NASA Unveils New Lunar Rover

NASA Lunar Science Institute: NASA's lunar rover and drill were designed to prospect for water and ice on the moon. Video Credit: Florida Today NASA is undertaking a possible rover mission that will hunt for large quantities of water on the lunar surface. NASA’s Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE) project is aimed at developing and testing methods and protocols for in situ resource utilization (ISRU). Development of the experiment package, initiated in 2005, supported lunar robotic precursor missions that could be flown to the rim or into a permanently shadowed crater with the objective of answering these questions surrounding elevated hydrogen at the lunar poles: What is it? How much is there? How deep or distributed is it? To do this, a drill takes a core sample at least 1 meter deep, crushes and heats sample segments from the core in an oven, and monitors the amount and type of volatile gases that evolve with a gas chromatograph (GC) as the sample rises in temperature. RESOLVE also selectively captures both hydrogen gas and water as a secondary method of quantification. A specialized camera that is coupled with a Raman spectrometer allows core samples to ...