NASA’s Polar Ice Experiment Paves Way for Future Moon Missions

An innovative NASA experiment is preparing for its journey to the Moon as part of Intuitive Machines’ second launch to the lunar surface. The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will be delivered through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative on the next lunar flight.

Designed to investigate the Moon’s subsurface, PRIME-1 will demonstrate groundbreaking technology to extract and analyze lunar soil, paving the way for sustainable human exploration under NASA’s Artemis campaign. In this video, Jackie Quinn explains how PRIME-1’s two key instruments – the Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrains (TRIDENT) and the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) – will work together to search for resources beneath the lunar surface.

The Athena lander, carrying PRIME-1 and other NASA technology demonstrations and science investigations, will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than Feb. 26.

For more information about CLPS, visit https://www.nasa.gov/clps.