NASA will put a robot the size of a golf cart on the Moon in 2022 to search for water deposits below the surface, before resending a human in 2024, and with the goal of using the liquid for survival and fuel for rockets, the US space agency said Friday.
The VIPER robot will drive for kilometers on the dusty lunar surface to see more closely what NASA chief Jim Bridenstine has described as underground bags of "hundreds of millions of tons of ice"
“VIPER will evaluate where the ice is. We will be able to characterize the ice and finally drill, ”Bridenstine said Friday at the International Astronautics Congress in Washington. “Why is this important? Because ice represents something significant: Life support. ”
VIPER stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.
The vehicle is expected to reach the southern polar region of the Moon in December 2022, with four instruments to sample the lunar soil for traces of hydrogen and oxygen, the basic components of water that can be separated and synthesized in fuel .
NASA crashed a rocket against the south pole of the Moon in 2009 to confirm traces of ice in the dust column that rose with the impact.
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