A view of the ice-mining Lunar rover and its main components.

Notices where this attachment appears

1. Embed this notice
   Fraser Cain (fraser@m.universetoday.com)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 10:48:09 JST Fraser Cain

   There are large deposits of ice in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters. The challenge is harvesting it for a future lunar base. Solar-powered rovers can't operate in the permanent darkness of the craters. Engineers have developed a design for an ice-mining rover powered by americium-241, which has a half-life of 432 years. This could give the rover enough electricity to operate for decades, heating the ice and trapping water vapor and other volatiles as they escape.

   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576524005459?dgcid=rss_sd_all