Lunar water: uses, evidence, and missions

Water ice at the Moon is studied mainly as a potential feedstock for life support, oxygen, and propellant once extracted and processed. Those uses are engineering goals, not results recorded in this dataset. NASA's overview of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is general orientation on why agencies pursue resource use on other worlds; it is not primary evidence for any mission outcome listed here.

Agencies and operators in this dataset that are pursuing lunar water-ice prospecting or related delivery include National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Indian Space Research Organisation, Blue Origin, and Intuitive Machines. Prospecting missions such as VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), PROSPECT (Package for Resource Observation, in-Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Characterisation & Testing) (linked host: Intuitive Machines IM-4; In development; Launch: Planned 2027 (target)), and LUPEX / Chandrayaan-5 (Lunar Polar Exploration mission) describe objectives to measure or sample polar volatiles. Other records cover payload delivery or host landers for ice-related instruments. A stated objective is not evidence that ice was found or extracted.

LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) impacted Cabeus crater in 2009; NASA announced water detection in the plume, and the mission record lists water ice at the Detected evidence step. PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1) flew the TRIDENT drill and MSOLO spectrometer on Intuitive Machines IM-2 (Athena lander). NASA reports the drill hardware was exercised and that MSOLO scans attributed detected gases to the lander and Earth; the PRIME-1 record does not report a drilled regolith sample that demonstrated lunar water, and its water-ice evidence level remains Targeted.

Chang'e-7: CNSA, 2026-08-19: the Chang'e-7 probe and Long March 5 Y14 were transferred to the launch area at Wenchang. CNSA, 2026-08-23: the China Manned Space Agency said the mission did not meet launch conditions and could not launch in that year's planned window. The 19 August line that a launch would be attempted in the coming days was overtaken on 23 August. The cited CNSA statement gives no replacement date. NARIT's own 24 August 2026 release reports postponement to 2027; that is a payload-partner statement, not a revised date in the CNSA notice. Phase 'manifested' means a named vehicle was assigned, not that a new window exists. A stated survey plan is not a detection or a sample.

Has anyone found usable water ice yet? Not in this dataset. The strongest evidence is detection: LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) found water in the Cabeus impact plume, and Colaprete et al. (2010) estimated 5.6 ± 2.9% water ice by mass at the impact site; Chandrayaan-1 carried NASA's M3 spectrometer, whose spectra showed hydroxyl or water features on the surface. Recent attempts to measure polar ice did not succeed: the PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1) payload flew on a lander that came to rest on its side; the cited NASA results do not report a drilled lunar-water sample or detection of lunar water. Contact with the Lunar Trailblazer orbiter was lost the day after launch. NASA selected the DISCO instrument on 30 September 2026 to measure ice in lunar micro-cold traps; no lander or date is named. A detection is not a measured, usable deposit.

Finding water in an impact plume is not the same as measuring a usable deposit, extracting ice repeatedly, processing it into propellant or oxygen, or delivering a resource commercially. No record in this dataset documents commercial delivery of a lunar resource. For the full published mission set that lists water ice, see missions by resource.