Publisher’s note: This article was updated on April 29, 2025 to correct the amount of data collected during the IM-2 mission of intuitive machines.
The NASA Prime-1 mission (Polar Resources Mining Experiment 1) was designed to demonstrate technologies to help scientists better understand lunar resources before Artemis missions on the crew on the Moon. During the short-term mission on the Moon, the performance of Prime-1 technology gave NASA teams to celebrate.
“The Prime-1 mission has proven that our equipment is working in the most severe environment we have ever tested,” said Janine Captain, Prime-1 investigator and research chemist at Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida. “Although he may not have gone exactly to plan, it is a huge step forward while we are preparing to return astronauts to the moon and build a lasting future there.”
IM-2 mission of intuitive machines Launched on the moon On February 26, 2025, the NASA Kennedy 39a launch complex, as part of the company’s second delivery of the NASA under the agency under the agency Clps (Commercial initiative of the lunar payload) and Artemic campaign. The Lander Lunar IM-2 Nova-C, named Athena, carried First And his suite of two instruments: an exercise known as Trident (the regolith and the exercise of ice to explore new terrains), designed to bring the lunar soil to the surface; and a mass spectrometer, mass spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSOLO), to study the trident drill cuts for the presence of gas which could one day help to provide a breathable propeller or oxygen for future Artemis explorers.
The IM-2 mission approached the lunar surface on March 6, just 1,300 feet (400 meters) of its planned landing site of Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the southern pole of the Moon. The Athena Lander rested on his side inside a crater preventing him from recharging his solar cells, leading to an end of the mission.
“We were supposed to have 10 days of operation on the Moon, and what we obtained was closer to 10 hours,” said Julie Kleinhenz, engineer of the main NASA systems for bonus-1, as well as the deputy for the capacity of the system of use of in situ resources for the agency. “It was 10 hours more than most people, so I’m happy to be part of it.”
Kleinhenz has spent almost 20 years working on how to use lunar resources for sustained operations. The use of in situ resources exploits local natural resources to mission destinations. This allows less launch and replenishment of replenishment and considerably reduces the mass, the cost and the risk of spatial exploration. With NASA on the verge of sending humans back to the moon and to Mars, generate products for life support, propellants, construction and energy of local materials will become more and more important for the success of the future mission.
“The use of in situ resources is the key to unlocking a long-term exploration, and Prime-1 helps us to set this foundation for future travelers.” Said Captain.
Prime-1 technology has also decided to answer questions about the properties of the lunar regolith, such as soil strength. These data could help to clarify the design of in situ resources use systems that would use local resources to create everything, rocket rocket landing pads and subsequent missions.
“Once we arrived on the lunar surface, Trident and Msolo both started and worked perfectly. From the point of view of technological demonstrations, 100% of the instruments worked. ” Kleinhenz said.
The light and low -power Augering forest built by Honeybee Robotics, known as Trident, is 1 meter long and has rotary and percussive actuators who convert the energy to the force necessary to drill. The exercise was designed to stop at any depth as controlled by the soil and place its sample on the surface for MSOLO analysis, a standard commercial mass spectrometer modified by engineers and technicians of NASA Kennedy to resist the hard lunar environment. Designed to measure the composition of gases near the lunar landing, both the landing and the ambient exosphere, the MSOLO can help NASA analyze the chemical composition of the lunar soil and study water on the surface of the moon.
Once on the moon, the actuators of the drill were designed, completing several movement stages necessary to pierce in the lunar surface. Invited by the orders of technicians on Earth, the tourist turned, the drill extended to its full range, the percussion system carried out a hammer movement and the Prime-1 team turned a nucleus radiator integrated into the forest and used internal thermal sensors to monitor the temperature change.
While MSOLO was able to perform several scans to detect gases, the researchers believe that the initial data that the detected gases were all anthropic or of human origin, such as the ventilated gases from space propellants and traces of the water from the earth. Prime-1 data has represented some of the approximately 6.6 gigabytes of data collected during the IM-2 mission, and researchers will continue to analyze data in the coming months and publish the results.