Drilling for Water

The key for Earth-based life is water. If we can find a source of water, we can do way more on a planet.

But, most water on most planets and moons is hard to find. It's buried as ice or trapped in minerals. So we have to dig. A lot.

A maintenance worker is visiting a robotic drilling rig on the moon.  It's a dusty business.

The usual process on the moon and Mars is for an orbiter to use radar to come up with some good guesses about water-bearing minerals or ice hidden under the surface.

Then we land a rover in that area to drill and measure the results. We call that "ground truth." Orbiters have good guesses, but rovers will give us the true picture.

If an area meets certain rules about the amount and depth of water, the Rocket Team will setup a robotic drilling rig to get the water out and ready to use. We use the water for drinking, bathing, crops, manufacturing, rocket fuel, and more.

Why use a robot? All that drilling in the moon's low gravity stirs up a lot of dust. The robots don't mind the dust, but people can't operate well in the low-visibility.

More info:

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/university-teams-asked-to-design-hardware-practice-drilling-for-water-on-the-moon-and-mars

[2] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/apollo-to-artemis-drilling-on-the-moon

[3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-viper-lunar-rover-to-map-water-ice-on-the-moon


If you had some moon water, what would you do with it? Tell me at

RamoneRocketeer -at- gmail -dot- com.