WATER ON THE MOON: PROSPECTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Thanks to a number of space missions to the Moon,we now know there are volatile compounds, including water ice, cold trapped at the lunar poles. How did they come to be there, and can water ice and other materials comprise a usable resource for space exploration? We will review what we know now, and what we need to know in order to gauge the utility of lunar ice and other volatiles for in situ resource utilization. Our first step will be the Resource Prospector, a landed robotic mission to prospect for lunar polar resources, and characterize their composition and distribution.

Speaker: Dr. Richard Elphic, NASA Ames