Moon South Pole Landing Site for NASA VIPER Mission to be Revealed Monday

Known to contain molecular water and other useful volatiles per LRO & Chandrayaan / Moon Mineralogy Mapper data, lunar South Pole region exploration is focus of CLPS mission sequence with Intuitive Machines to deliver Prime-1 consisting of Trident 1m drill / MSolo off-the-shelf mass spectrometer to area in Q4 2022 under US$47M contract, Astrobotic to deliver VIPER autonomous rover with same instrument suite late 2023 under $199.5M contract; Landing site selection may have profound implications for human lunar base buildout, with Shackleton, Cabeus, Nobile Craters, Leibniz Plateau, Malapert Mountain being strong contenders

Pictured (L-R): NASA Planetary Science Division Director Lori Glaze, VIPER Project Manager Daniel Andrews, Lead Project Scientist Anthony Colaprete, Deputy Lead Project Scientist Darlene Lim; Credits: LPI, NASA, Wikipedia