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Scientists want to send 6.7M sperm samples to the moon
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By NASA
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 captured an image March 6, 2025, after landing in a crater from the Moon’s South Pole. The lunar lander is on its side near the intended landing site, Mons Mouton. In the center of the image between the two lander legs is the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 suite, which shows the drill deployed.Intuitive Machines NASA’s PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1) mission was designed to demonstrate technologies to help scientists better understand lunar resources ahead of crewed Artemis missions to the Moon. During the short-lived mission on the Moon, the performance of PRIME-1’s technology gave NASA teams reason to celebrate.
“The PRIME-1 mission proved that our hardware works in the harshest environment we’ve ever tested it in,” said Janine Captain, PRIME-1 co-principal investigator and research chemist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “While it may not have gone exactly to plan, this is a huge step forward as we prepare to send astronauts back to the Moon and build a sustainable future there.”
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission launched to the Moon on Feb. 26, 2025, from NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, as part of the company’s second Moon delivery for NASA under the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign. The IM-2 Nova-C lunar lander, named Athena, carried PRIME-1 and its suite of two instruments: a drill known as TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain), designed to bring lunar soil to the surface; and a mass spectrometer, Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO), to study TRIDENT’s drill cuttings for the presence of gases that could one day help provide propellant or breathable oxygen to future Artemis explorers.
The IM-2 mission touched down on the lunar surface on March 6, just around 1,300 feet (400 meters) from its intended landing site of Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the Moon’s South Pole. The Athena lander was resting on its side inside a crater preventing it from recharging its solar cells, resulting in an end of the mission.
“We were supposed to have 10 days of operation on the Moon, and what we got was closer to 10 hours,” said Julie Kleinhenz, NASA’s lead systems engineer for PRIME-1, as well as the in-situ resource utilization system capability lead deputy for the agency. “It was 10 hours more than most people get so I am thrilled to have been a part of it.”
Kleinhenz has spent nearly 20 years working on how to use lunar resources for sustained operations. In-situ resource utilization harnesses local natural resources at mission destinations. This enables fewer launches and resupply missions and significantly reduces the mass, cost, and risk of space exploration. With NASA poised to send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars, generating products for life support, propellants, construction, and energy from local materials will become increasingly important to future mission success.
“In-situ resource utilization is the key to unlocking long-term exploration, and PRIME-1 is helping us lay this foundation for future travelers.” Captain said.
The PRIME-1 technology also set out to answer questions about the properties of lunar regolith, such as soil strength. This data could help inform the design of in-situ resource utilization systems that would use local resources to create everything from landing pads to rocket fuel during Artemis and later missions.
“Once we got to the lunar surface, TRIDENT and MSOLO both started right up, and performed perfectly. From a technology demonstrations standpoint, 100% of the instruments worked.” Kleinhenz said.
The lightweight, low-power augering drill built by Honeybee Robotics, known as TRIDENT, is 1 meter long and features rotary and percussive actuators that convert energy into the force needed to drill. The drill was designed to stop at any depth as commanded from the ground and deposit its sample on the surface for analysis by MSOLO, a commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer modified by engineers and technicians at NASA Kennedy to withstand the harsh lunar environment. Designed to measure the composition of gases in the vicinity of the lunar lander, both from the lander and from the ambient exosphere, MSOLO can help NASA analyze the chemical makeup of the lunar soil and study water on the surface of the Moon.
Once on the Moon, the actuators on the drill performed as designed, completing multiple stages of movement necessary to drill into the lunar surface. Prompted by commands from technicians on Earth, the auger rotated, the drill extended to its full range, the percussion system performed a hammering motion, and the PRIME-1 team turned on an embedded core heater in the drill and used internal thermal sensors to monitor the temperature change.
While MSOLO was able to perform several scans to detect gases, researchers believe from the initial data that the gases detected were all anthropogenic, or human in origin, such as gases vented from spacecraft propellants and traces of Earth water. Data from PRIME-1 accounted for some of the approximately 7.5 gigabytes of data collected during the IM-2 mission, and researchers will continue to analyze the data in the coming months and publish the results.
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By NASA
The Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo) for NASA’s Volatile Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission is prepared for packing inside a laboratory in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 21, 2023. MSolo is a commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer modified to work in space and it will help analyze the chemical makeup of landing sites on the Moon, as well as study water on the lunar surface.NASA/Kim Shiflett A NASA-developed technology that recently proved its capabilities in the harsh environment of space will soon head back to the Moon to search for gases trapped under the lunar surface thanks to a new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between NASA and commercial company Magna Petra Corp.
The Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) successfully demonstrated the full range of its hardware in lunar conditions during the Intuitive Machines 2 mission earlier this year. Under the new agreement, a second MSOLO, mounted on a commercial rover, will launch to the Moon no earlier than 2026. Once on the lunar surface, it will measure low molecular weight volatiles in hopes of inferring the presence of rare isotopes, such as Helium-3, which is theorized to exist, trapped in the regolith, or lunar dust, of the Moon.
“This new mission opportunity will help us determine what volatiles are present in the lunar surface, while also providing scientific insight for Magna Petra’s goals,” said Roberto Aguilar Ayala, research physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “Learning more about the lunar volatiles and their isotopes supports NASA’s goal of sustaining long-term human space exploration. We will need to extract resources locally to enhance the capabilities of our astronauts to further exploration opportunities on the lunar surface.”
The MSOLO instrument will be integrated on a commercial rover, selected by Magna Petra. The rover will allow MSOLO to gather the data needed for researchers to understand which low-molecular weight gases reside within the Moon’s surface.
NASA will work with the partner to integrate MSOLO so that it will function properly with the rover, and the partner will analyze and share data in real time with NASA to understand the location of these volatiles on the Moon and their ability to be extracted in the future.
Magna Petra hopes to understand the presence of Helium-3 isotope within the Moon’s surface, with the ultimate goal of collecting it and bringing it back to Earth for use in a variety of industries, including energy production through nuclear fusion, quantum computing, health care, and specialized laboratory equipment.
The MSOLO instrument began as a commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer designed to analyze volatiles used in the manufacturing of semi-conductors, which helped keep NASA’s development costs down. NASA modified the device to withstand the rigors of spaceflight and the Moon’s harsh conditions. On its first journey to the Moon, MSOLO was part of the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1.
Signed on April 2, the reimbursable agreement is the first of its kind established at NASA Kennedy. Under the agreement, Magna Petra will reimburse NASA for costs such as supporting MSOLO integration and testing with the rover, pre-mission preparation and mission operations of the instruments, and expertise in system engineering, avionics, and software.
“This innovative agreement promises to provide valuable data to both partners,” said Jonathan Baker, chief of Spaceport Development at NASA Kennedy. “This approach demonstrates NASA’s commitment to finding unique ways to work with commercial industry to help advance technology in a fiscally responsible way and enabling innovation for the benefit of humankind.”
Throughout the mission, NASA will retain ownership of MSOLO. Once the mission is complete, the instrument will no longer have access to power and communications and will remain on the surface of the Moon. The valuable data gathered during the mission will be submitted to the Planetary Data System for public dissemination.
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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Marshall Fires Up Hybrid Rocket Motor to Prep for Moon Landings
NASA’s Artemis campaign will use human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, to safely transport crew to and from the surface of the Moon, in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. As the landers touch down and lift off from the Moon, rocket exhaust plumes will affect the top layer of lunar “soil,” called regolith, on the Moon. When the lander’s engines ignite to decelerate prior to touchdown, they could create craters and instability in the area under the lander and send regolith particles flying at high speeds in various directions.
To better understand the physics behind the interaction of exhaust from the commercial human landing systems and the Moon’s surface, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently test-fired a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor more than 30 times. The 3D-printed hybrid rocket motor, developed at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, ignites both solid fuel and a stream of gaseous oxygen to create a powerful stream of rocket exhaust.
“Artemis builds on what we learned from the Apollo missions to the Moon. NASA still has more to learn more about how the regolith and surface will be affected when a spacecraft much larger than the Apollo lunar excursion module lands, whether it’s on the Moon for Artemis or Mars for future missions,” said Manish Mehta, Human Landing System Plume & Aero Environments discipline lead engineer. “Firing a hybrid rocket motor into a simulated lunar regolith field in a vacuum chamber hasn’t been achieved in decades. NASA will be able to take the data from the test and scale it up to correspond to flight conditions to help us better understand the physics, and anchor our data models, and ultimately make landing on the Moon safer for Artemis astronauts.”
Fast Facts
Over billions of years, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts have ground up the surface of the Moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder, called regolith. Regolith can be made of different minerals based on its location on the Moon. The varying mineral compositions mean regolith in certain locations could be denser and better able to support structures like landers. Of the 30 test fires performed in NASA Marshall’s Component Development Area, 28 were conducted under vacuum conditions and two were conducted under ambient pressure. The testing at Marshall ensures the motor will reliably ignite during plume-surface interaction testing in the 60-ft. vacuum sphere at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, later this year.
Once the testing at NASA Marshall is complete, the motor will be shipped to NASA Langley. Test teams at NASA Langley will fire the hybrid motor again but this time into simulated lunar regolith, called Black Point-1, in the 60-foot vacuum sphere. Firing the motor from various heights, engineers will measure the size and shape of craters the rocket exhaust creates as well as the speed and direction the simulated lunar regolith particles travel when the rocket motor exhaust hits them.
“We’re bringing back the capability to characterize the effects of rocket engines interacting with the lunar surface through ground testing in a large vacuum chamber — last done in this facility for the Apollo and Viking programs. The landers going to the Moon through Artemis are much larger and more powerful, so we need new data to understand the complex physics of landing and ascent,” said Ashley Korzun, principal investigator for the plume-surface interaction tests at NASA Langley. “We’ll use the hybrid motor in the second phase of testing to capture data with conditions closely simulating those from a real rocket engine. Our research will reduce risk to the crew, lander, payloads, and surface assets.”
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Credit: NASA Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
News Media Contact
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
A new wave of ocean scientists has embarked on an extraordinary six-week voyage aboard a majestic tall ship that set sail today from Norway bound for southern France. But this is no ordinary journey.
Thanks to this ESA Advanced Ocean Training Course, these upcoming researchers will be taking a deep dive into ocean science, empowering them with skills to harness satellite data for research, innovation and sustainable development – and preparing them to become tomorrow’s leaders and ambassadors for ocean science.
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By NASA
Scientists have hypothesized since the 1960s that the Sun is a source of ingredients that form water on the Moon. When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind smashes into the lunar surface, the idea goes, it triggers a chemical reaction that could make water molecules.
Now, in the most realistic lab simulation of this process yet, NASA-led researchers have confirmed this prediction.
The finding, researchers wrote in a March 17 paper in JGR Planets, has implications for NASA’s Artemis astronaut operations at the Moon’s South Pole. A critical resource for exploration, much of the water on the Moon is thought to be frozen in permanently shadowed regions at the poles.
“The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the Sun, which is always spitting out hydrogen, there’s a possibility of creating water,” Li Hsia Yeo, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s incredible to think about,” said Yeo, who led the study.
Solar wind flows constantly from the Sun. It’s made largely of protons, which are nuclei of hydrogen atoms that have lost their electrons. Traveling at more than one million miles per hour, the solar wind bathes the entire solar system. We see evidence of it on Earth when it lights up our sky in auroral light shows.
Computer-processed data of the solar wind from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft. Download here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20278/ NASA/SwRI/Craig DeForest Most of the solar particles don’t reach the surface of Earth because our planet has a magnetic shield and an atmosphere to deflect them. But the Moon has no such protection. As computer models and lab experiments have shown, when protons smash into the Moon’s surface, which is made of a dusty and rocky material called regolith, they collide with electrons and recombine to form hydrogen atoms.
Then, the hydrogen atoms can migrate through the lunar surface and bond with the abundant oxygen atoms already present in minerals like silica to form hydroxyl (OH) molecules, a component of water, and water (H2O) molecules themselves.
Scientists have found evidence of both hydroxyl and water molecules in the Moon’s upper surface, just a few millimeters deep. These molecules leave behind a kind of chemical fingerprint — a noticeable dip in a wavy line on a graph that shows how light interacts with the regolith. With the current tools available, though, it is difficult to tell the difference between hydroxyl and water, so scientists use the term “water” to refer to either one or a mix of both molecules.
Many researchers think the solar wind is the main reason the molecules are there, though other sources like micrometeorite impacts could also help by creating heat and triggering chemical reactions.
In 2016, scientists discovered that water is released from the Moon during meteor showers. When a speck of comet debris strikes the moon, it vaporizes on impact, creating a shock wave in the lunar soil. With a sufficiently large impactor, this shock wave can breach the soil’s dry upper layer and release water molecules from a hydrated layer below. NASA’s LADEE spacecraft detected these water molecules as they entered the tenuous lunar atmosphere. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab Spacecraft measurements had already hinted that the solar wind is the primary driver of water, or its components, at the lunar surface. One key clue, confirmed by Yeo’s team’s experiment: the Moon’s water-related spectral signal changes over the course of the day.
In some regions, it’s stronger in the cooler morning and fades as the surface heats up, likely because water and hydrogen molecules move around or escape to space. As the surface cools again at night, the signal peaks again. This daily cycle points to an active source — most likely the solar wind—replenishing tiny amounts of water on the Moon each day.
To test whether this is true, Yeo and her colleague, Jason McLain, a research scientist at NASA Goddard, built a custom apparatus to examine Apollo lunar samples. In a first, the apparatus held all experiment components inside: a solar particle beam device, an airless chamber that simulated the Moon’s environment, and a molecule detector. Their invention allowed the researchers to avoid ever taking the sample out of the chamber — as other experiments did — and exposing it to contamination from the water in the air.
“It took a long time and many iterations to design the apparatus components and get them all to fit inside,” said McLain, “but it was worth it, because once we eliminated all possible sources of contamination, we learned that this decades-old idea about the solar wind turns out to be true.”
Using dust from two different samples picked up on the Moon by NASA’s Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, Yeo and her colleagues first baked the samples to remove any possible water they could have picked up between air-tight storage in NASA’s space-sample curation facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and Goddard’s lab. Then, they used a tiny particle accelerator to bombard the dust with mock solar wind for several days — the equivalent of 80,000 years on the Moon, based on the high dose of the particles used.
They used a detector called a spectrometer to measure how much light the dust molecules reflected, which showed how the samples’ chemical makeup changed over time.
In the end, the team saw a drop in the light signal that bounced to their detector precisely at the point in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum — near 3 microns — where water typically absorbs energy, leaving a telltale signature.
While they can’t conclusively say if their experiment made water molecules, the researchers reported in their study that the shape and width of the dip in the wavy line on their graph suggests that both hydroxyl and water were produced in the lunar samples.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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