The first European device to land on the Moon this decade will be a drill and sample analysis package, and the teams behind it are one step closer to flight as part of Russia’s Luna-27 mission.
The main goal of the Luna-27 lander is to study the composition of the soil near the lunar south pole. Water is a key target: there may be concentrations of frozen water at or below the surface.
A major European contribution to the mission is Prospect, a robotic drill and a miniature laboratory with a suite of scientific instruments designed to penetrate the Moon’s soil to depths of up to one metre, acquire lunar samples, and deliver them to the mini labs hosted by the lander.
Answering questions such as how much water is present and how accessible it is will help plan future missions involving the use of local resources.