NASA announced Wednesday that an ice-mining mission will be sent to the moon’s south Pole by NASA. It is expected to arrive in orbit in late next year.
The mission will travel to a ridge near the Shackleton crater in late 2022. This is an area where NASA scientists and engineers believe there could be ice below the surface.
This region, which has been studied over’months’, receives enough sunlight for a lander to power a 10-day mission. However, it is still within easy reach for communications.
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It will be the first occasion that resources are extracted from the moon. This could help NASA establish a presence there, especially for the Artemis missions.
NASA has teamed up with Intuitive Machines (the agency’s partner in commercial deliveries to the Moon), for the mission. It will use Intuitive’s Nova-C lander.

NASA will send an experiment to mine ice at the moon’s south pole using Intuitive machine’s Nova-C lander (pictured).

The mission will travel to a ridge near the Shackleton crater (pictured), by late 2022. This area is believed to have ice beneath the surface, according to NASA engineers and scientists.
According to the agency, this area and the conditions it creates offer the best chance of proving that the three technologies aboard the robotic lander work.
- The Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1, (PRIME-1).
- Nokia of America Corporation has developed a 4G/LTE communications system.
- Micro-Nova is a deployable hopper robot created by Intuitive Machines.
‘PRIME-1 has been permanently attached to Intuitive Machines NovaC lander, and it was difficult to find a landing spot where we might find ice within three feet of its surface,’ stated Dr Jackie Quinn who is the PRIME-1 project manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Although there is enough sunlight to power the payloads’ solar panels, the surface is too hot to sustain ice within the reach of the PRIME-1 drill. We had to find a site that would get enough sunlight to power the mission requirements, but also provide good Earth communications.

The Shackleton Crater receives enough sunlight for a lander to power a 10-day mission.
In October 2020, NASA chose Nokia to build the first cellular network on the moon ahead of the 2024 Artemis mission.
The PRIME-1 drill (also known as TRIDENT) will attempt to drill three-feet of lunar soil (regolith), once the lander reaches the moon’s south pole. Once it reaches the surface, it will search for water.
MSolo, the other PRIME-1 instrument will measure gases that escape from TRIDENT’s regolith.
NASA, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and Nokia were among the researchers who created ‘ice-mining maps of the surface with remote sensing data.
NASA added that drilling into the lunar surface and operating it will give engineers valuable insight for future lunar missions like the Volatiles Investigation Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER mission, which is due to land at South Pole in late 2023.
Nokia will test the cellular network with a Lunar Outpost-developed rover. It will be more than a mile from the Nova C lander to check the strength of its network.
NASA stated that it could be a commercial 4G/LTE network, with high-definition video from base stations, vehicles, and other astronauts, if it’s successful.
Niki Werkheiser is the director of technology maturation at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
“The data will inform the designs of future in-situ resources utilization, mobility and communication, power, and dust mitigation abilities.