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Spacecraft

Payload

Payload

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Moon: Cabeus crater, lunar south pole

Moon: Mons Mouton region, lunar south pole; landed in a crater off target (NASA text says about 400 m, NASA caption about 820 ft, NTRS slides about 500 m)

Moon: Mons Mouton, lunar south pole region

Ended

Ended

In development

Confirm the presence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the lunar south pole by impact and plume observation.

Demonstrate drilling into the lunar south polar surface with on-site mass-spectrometer analysis of gases released from the cuttings, to characterize subsurface volatiles such as water ice.

Search for and map volatile resources such as water ice at the lunar south pole during a 100-day surface mission.

NASA spacecraft launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on 18 June 2009. On 9 October 2009 its spent Centaur upper stage struck the permanently shadowed floor of Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole and the shepherding spacecraft observed the plume before its own impact; NASA announced on 13 November 2009 that water was detected, and Colaprete et al. (2010) estimated water ice at 5.6 +/- 2.9% by mass in the regolith at the impact site. LCROSS instrument data and selected Earth-based observations are available from the PDS Geosciences Node archive.

NASA payload combining the TRIDENT drill (built by Honeybee Robotics) and the MSOLO mass spectrometer, flown on Intuitive Machines' IM-2 Athena lander, which landed on its side in a crater near Mons Mouton on 6 March 2025 and ended operations after roughly half a day. NASA reports the drill's auger, full extension, percussion and core heater were exercised and that MSOLO recorded scans in which the detected gases were attributed to the lander and Earth; NASA does not report a drilled regolith sample or any detection of lunar water.

NASA ice-prospecting rover built for a 100-day mission at the lunar south pole. NASA announced on 17 July 2024 that it would discontinue the project over cost growth and launch delays, then on 19 September 2025 awarded Blue Origin CLPS task order CS-7 (potential value $190 million) with an option to deliver VIPER on a second Blue Moon MK1 lander targeting late 2027; NASA will decide on that option after Blue Origin's first MK1 flight, which had not flown as of the last check.

• Success.
• Agency statement: "indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon's south pole"

• Partial.
• Agency statement, which may concern its host flight, Intuitive Machines IM-2: "While this mission didn't achieve all of its objectives for NASA, the work that went into the payload development is already informing other agency and commercial efforts"

• Has not flown.
• Planned landing: 2027 H2 (target). A plan, not a result.

• Water ice: Detected (seen remotely)
• Volatiles: Detected (seen remotely)

• Water ice: Targeted (mission aimed at it)
• Volatiles: Targeted (mission aimed at it)

• Water ice: Targeted (mission aimed at it)
• Volatiles: Targeted (mission aimed at it)

• Record checked 2026-09-25
• Newest dated source 2010-10-22

• Record checked 2026-09-25
• Newest dated source 2026-04

• Record checked 2026-10-31
• Newest dated source 2026-10-20

• Launch vehicle not captured from a primary page.

• No peer-reviewed PRIME-1 results paper located; NASA said results would be published.

• Whether NASA has exercised the delivery option under task order CS-7 after its September 2025 announcement has not been established from the primary pages reviewed.

LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite)

4 cited publications

PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1)

4 cited publications

VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover)

8 cited publications