A water-mapping rover

While Lunar Flashlight would eye the moon from above, the Resource Prospector Mission (RPM) plans to send a rover onto the lunar surface to get an up-close look.

This rover would land at a yet-to-be-determined polar site and map surface and subsurface concentrations of hydrogen at two different locations, which would ideally be separated by at least 0.6 miles (1 km). RPM would use a neutron spectrometer to measure water concentrations up to 3.3 feet (1 m) underground and a near-infrared spectrometer to make its surface measurements.

The solar-powered rover would roll into permananently shadowed regions, relying on batteries to keep working in the dark. It would likely have an operational lifetime of about one week on the lunar surface, mission officials have said.

Like Lunar Flashlight, RPM is geared to help enable future exploitation of water ice on the moon.

"How is the water ice distributed in the soil?" RPM project scientist Tony Colaprete of NASA Ames said at the Exploration Science Forum event. "That's really what Resource Prospector is fundamentally about, is identifying, locating the 'ore' and understanding how to excavate it — how to get at it — and what does that cost in terms of energy."

The rover would also be equipped with a drill, allowing it to take samples from up to 3.3 feet (1 m) deep, Colaprete said. Collected samples would be heated up in an oven, and the volatile materials such as water liberated by this process would be identified and quantified.

RPM also plans to extract oxygen from lunar dirt in a demonstration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). (This oxygen can be combined with hydrogen carried onboard to create water.)

"We need to take the first steps in demonstrating off of this world utilization of material," Colaprete said. "There's a lot of technology demonstration in here that's not just applicable to the moon; it's applicable to any mission, to any surface where you want to manipulate materials."

Mars is one such place. Indeed, NASA is also planning to conduct an ISRU experiment on the Red Planet in the coming years. In July, agency officials announced that its next Mars rover, slated to blast off in 2020, will carry an instrument that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere.