MOON — NASA plans to send a robotic rover to search for water ice at the moon's South Pole in 2022, according to an October 25 news release published on NASA's website.<br /><br />The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will be roughly the size of a golf cart.<br /><br />VIPER will collect data for roughly 100 days as it uses the Neutron Spectrometer System to detect wet sections underneath the moon's surface.<br /><br />Once such an area is detected, VIPER will deploy a one-meter long drill to dig for soil cuttings that are up to a meter underneath its surface.<br /><br />These drill samples will then be analyzed by two other instruments carried by the rover: the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations, or MSolo, and the Near InfraRed Volatiles Spectrometer System, or NIRVSS.<br /><br />VIPER will also gather data on how different kinds of soil environments on the moon's South Pole are affected by sunlight and different temperatures.<br /><br />The data will allow the space agency to map out places where water could potentially lie on the moon.<br /><br />NASA says that water extracted from the moon could be used for fuel in rockets or be turned into oxygen for astronauts.<br /><br />VIPER is part of NASA's Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program.
