NASA picks spot at Moon's South Pole to perform first ice-drilling experiment
- Reference: 1636009864
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/11/04/moon_mining_location/
- Source link:
NASA has grand plans for the Moon. The gray ball of rock could, one day, house a base station for astronauts to stay and refuel their spacecraft as they prepare for missions further out into the Solar System. But before this vision can be fully realized, NASA is investigating what potential lunar resources can be extracted and what kind of technology is needed to support any future visitors. Finding water and sorting out communications will be key.
And so we have the NASA-funded Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1 or [1]PRIME-1 for short. This will involve sending to the Moon a lander named Nova-C, equipped with a drill and mass spectrometer, to sniff out H 2 O and other molecules beneath the surface.
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For communications, the PRIME-1 mission will also send over a rover equipped with a Nokia-built 4G communications system that will roam around Nova-C and perform wireless data transmission tests with the lander. A small robot, known as Micro-Nova, will accompany it, and bounce over the lunar surface in fuel-efficient hops to map out craters nearby and send data to the Nova lander for transmission to Earth.
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The Nova-C lander, pictured, will make the first ice-water-drilling attempt on the Moon in late 2022. Source: NASA. Click to enlarge
The instruments and devices will have to function in a challenging environment. Some regions of the Moon’s surface are too hot to drill for ice due to the amount of sunlight they get, and the parts permanently in shade don’t receive enough solar energy to power landers and robots. NASA selected a ridge on the lunar south pole close to the Shackleton crater that looks likely to contain frozen water and allow Nova-C, Micro-Nova, and the Nokia-equipped bot to sufficiently operate.
“PRIME-1 is permanently attached to Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, and finding a landing location where we might discover ice within three feet of the surface was challenging,” Jackie Quinn, PRIME-1 project manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, [4]said on Wednesday.
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“While there is plenty of sunlight to power the payloads, the surface gets too warm to sustain ice within reach of the PRIME-1 drill. We needed to find a ‘goldilocks’ site that gets just enough sunlight to meet mission requirements while also being a safe place to land with good Earth communications.”
NASA expects its instruments to be able to last about ten days in the region before running out of power. The lander's drill, known as The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain aka TRIDENT, will bore down three feet to obtain a chunk of lunar regolith. The sample will be brought to the surface and the lander's mass spectrometer will measure the material's water and volatile gas content, if any.
[7]NASA hopes VIPER rover will search for water in Moon's Nobile crater in 2023
[8]Ice, ice maybe? Astrobotic will ride SpaceX's Falcon Heavy to the Moon in 2023 and drop off NASA's water-hunting rover
[9]South Korea says 2022 moonshot on track, will test interplanetary internet and search for water
[10]Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter
Meanwhile, the small robot carrying Nokia’s comms gear will meander a mile away and beam data to the Nova-C lander to send back to Earth. Mission control will test its capabilities in the hopes of setting up a 4G/LTE system on the Moon at some point so that astronauts can stream high-definition video and keep in contact in and around the proposed lunar station.
The Micro-Nova robot will hop into a nearby crater to take images and data, which will be uploaded to the lander to be sent to Earth. It can carry up to a little under a kilogram of equipment and travel at least 1.5 miles. The experiment will test the hopper's mobility to see whether the technology is reliable enough to be eventually kitted out with cameras, seismometers, and other instruments to collect data for scientists.
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“These early technology demonstrations employ innovative partnerships to provide valuable information about operating on and exploring the lunar surface,” said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). “The data will inform the designs for future in-situ resource utilization, mobility, communication, power, and dust mitigation capabilities.”
The results from PRIME-1 at the end of 2022 will aid NASA’s [12]VIPER mission, in which a golf-cart-sized rover will be sent to the Moon in 2023 to hunt and map sources of water. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/game_changing_development/projects/PRIME-1/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YYlX0X7sJQyVQkatGilxNwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/11/04/nova.jpg
[4] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-intuitive-machines-announce-landing-site-location-for-lunar-drill
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYlX0X7sJQyVQkatGilxNwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/nasas_viper_rover_to_search/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/astrobotic_spacex_griffin_viper/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/31/south_korea_says_2022_moonshot/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/martian_blood_brick_plan/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYlX0X7sJQyVQkatGilxNwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/nasas_viper_rover_to_search/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: PR1ME and Nova
There is a balancing act to the compute power, you could use the latest and greatest tech with enough graded-Z shielding, but the lifetime of your chips will be still be shorter. Or you can use the exact same graded-Z shielding and have your chips operational for multiple decades if you use older big chunky chips that are designed to gracefully handle SEU (Single Event Upsets). Nothing lasts forever and both will eventually fail due to TID (Total Ionizing Dose), and that is where bigger (older tech) is nearly always better.
The best analogy would be continuously hitting a twig versus hitting the tree trunk with a peashooter or a BB gun, both will eventually fail but one will take much much longer. We sometimes forget how well we are shielded at sea level with 12 km of atmosphere above our heads, the Ozone layer to block all UV-C (breaks most organic bonds e.g. plastics, flesh) and the magnetosphere which funnels most charged particles to the poles or traps them in the Van Allen radiation belt.
"what potential lunar resources can be extracted"
"Huston, the Locust is landing once again"
I'm reminded of a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon of a couple of spherical boys on padded bunks. The caption went something like:
"Johnny exploded last week - I wonder why"
"Who cares? More for us!"
Nokia technology
Well, the battery will last a month or more between charges.....
Re: Nokia technology
Yes, but can you play snake on it?
Why do you need 4G on the Moon?
Isn't the point of 4G and any other mobile standard all to do with managing shared access to the frequencies you've licensed on Earth? Surely on the Moon you can do what you like on whatever frequency suits you, because there's nobody else around to be bothered by it?
Or is it just cheaper and easier to pick up an off-the-shelf component, albeit with unnecessary complexity? If that's the case then I'm not sure why NASA would want to boast about any aspect of it other than the cost saving, although the supplier might want to say more.
Re: Why do you need 4G on the Moon?
Round here we are shielded from all sorts of radiation by the magnetosphere, the moon does not have a significant magnetosphere (if any) so all sorts of radio frequency crap bombard the moon.
Consequently a radio system either has to be powerful enough to punch through (Apollo era tech) or have robust error correction built in. 4G would seem to fit the bill nicely so why bother to develop new methods.
Before you start building colonies there
NASA should read the RAH classic 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'...
Re: Before you start building colonies there
Cue the computer on the next mission being called Adam Selene.
Re: Before you start building colonies there
FWIW, it was called Mycroft. Adam Selene was Mycrofts "nom de plume" as one of the leaders of the revolution :-)
Terra Nova
Let's hope it goes better then Scott's expedition to the South Pole
At least Shackleton made it back alive, although he didn't get there.
Ominous
Sounds to me like a precursor mission to the film "Moon" becoming a reality
That render...
Is it just me or does that illustration look like a screen grab from Kerbal?
Bounce?
"A small robot, known as Micro-Nova, will accompany it, and bounce over the lunar surface in fuel-efficient hops"
Couldn't NASA come up with a suitable phase to fit "Tee Eye Double Grr ERR"?
Terminator
Real question :
So, is it not possible to land a base unit on the permanently sunny side and have an umbilical/tether to a either a mobile rover unit or a secondary dark base with a mobile/rechargeable unit on the dark side [edison solution]
Or go Tesla (Nikolai) and do wireless power transfer from a sunny base to the dark one..
[JFSNG - use the shark mounted lasers to beam power directly to the moon, requires sharks in all oceans]
icon because we are crossing one...
Re: Terminator @Dante Alighieri
Or thinking more outside the box why not just carry a mirror on the one in the sun. A mirror could power the the drilling robot for several years before the levels of dust made it ineffective, while converting sunlight to wireless power and beaming it round, means a massive decrease in efficiency and reliability. Sometimes old technology is still the best.
I think the may just be a tiny price difference as well, so cost savings may allow extra experiments to be carried out.
In fact if it is always in the sun, surely the weight of the mirror and solar panels on the mining robot would be less that the planned batteries, meaning it could carry more powerful motors. I guess it is too late for Prime-1 but when they send the next one, I hope they send me a beer with some of the money they save.
Even if it is just one of these--->
Zoom on the Moon!
"hopes of setting up a 4G/LTE system on the Moon at some point so that astronauts can stream high-definition video and keep in contact"
I'd hate to think what the roaming charges will be!
Let's hope the residents don't think we're there to steal their soup.
PR1ME and Nova
Prime and Nova. Let's hope NASA aren't using these as the compute power for their new mission. I mean I liked the Data General Nova-3 I worked on in the 1970s, but even if they were reliable they are a bit old-tech now. I never got to use a PR1ME - too business oriented.