Nasa selects Moon site for ice-hunting rover

WASHINGTON • The United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has announced it would land an ice-seeking rover on a region of the Moon's south pole called the Nobile Crater in 2023.

The space agency hopes the robot will confirm the presence of water ice just below the surface, which could one day be converted into rocket fuel for missions to Mars and deeper into the cosmos.

While the Soviet Union sent two rovers in the 1970s, and China has sent two since 2013 - including one in 2019 as part of the first mission to land on the far side of the Moon - Viper (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) will be Nasa's first robotic Moon rover.

"Nobile Crater is an impact crater near the south pole that was born through a collision with another smaller celestial body," Dr Lori Glaze, director of Nasa's planetary science division, said on Monday.

It is one of the solar system's coldest regions, and has only so far been probed from afar using sensors such as those aboard Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

"The rover is going to get up close and personal with the lunar soil, even drilling several feet down," said Dr Glaze.

Its dimensions are similar to a golf cart - 1.5m by 1.5m by 2.5m and looks somewhat similar to droids seen in Star Wars. It weighs 430kg.

Unlike rovers used on Mars, Viper can be piloted in near real time, because the distance from Earth is much shorter - only around 300,000km or 1.3 light seconds.

The rover is also faster, topping out at 0.8kmh.

Solar-powered Viper comes with a 50-hour battery, is built to withstand extreme temperatures, and can "crab walk" so that its panels keep pointing towards the Sun to maintain charging.

In terms of the mission's scientific goals, the Viper team wants to know how frozen water reached the Moon in the first place; how it remained preserved for billions of years; how it escapes; and where the water goes now.

But Nasa officials concede they do not have definitive data showing there is any significant amount of water in the Nobile region. Regardless of whether water exists there, the Viper mission's findings will provide a comparison between what is measured from orbit and what is actually in the lunar soil.

"If we find that there's no water in any place we look, that is a fundamental discovery," said Dr Anthony Colaprete, the mission's lead scientist, "and we will be scratching our heads and rewriting textbooks again".

The mission is part of Nasa's Artemis programme, the US' plan to return humans to the Moon. The first crewed mission is technically set for 2024, but will likely take place significantly later as various aspects are running behind schedule.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES