Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Caltech-led Lunar Trailblazer mission on the prowl to probe the abundance, distribution of water on the Moon, as well as the lunar water cycle.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin

A hot topic in Moon exploration is finding reservoirs of water ice within “cold traps” at the lunar south pole.

If found in permanently-shadowed regions, or PSRs, that resource may be ripe for the picking and processing into oxygen and hydrogen – ideal for life support, even manufacturing rocket fuel.

Exploitable water ice at the lunar south pole is high on NASA’s Artemis agenda to facilitate a “sustainable” human presence on the Moon.

Intuitive Machines (IM-2), a Nova-C lunar lander dubbed Athena is being prepared for sendoff to the Moon’s south pole. Onboard the lander is the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), a NASA experiment designed to search for water ice on the Moon.
Image credit: Intuitive Machines

But NASA is not alone in wanting to locate and use that celestial commodity.

For more information, go to my new SpaceNews story – “Ice-hunting Lunar Trailblazer and IM-2 nearly ready for January 2025 launch” – at:

https://spacenews.com/ice-hunting-lunar-trailblazer-im2-nearly-ready-january-2025-launch/