AI Translation
23 OCT. 2026
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In this photo, Christian Panza—one of the engineers who knows the drill better than anyone else and Prospect’s technical manager at Leonardo’s Space Division—watches it in operation.
ESA's Prospect mission will send a drill and a science laboratory to work together near the lunar South Pole. Conditions in that area, near permanently shadowed craters, could offer the best chance of finding potential sources of water and oxygen for future explorers.
In this picture, one of the engineers who knows the drill better than anyone else is watching it in action.
In this image, one of the engineers who knows the drill better than anyone else watches it in action. Christian Panza, Prospect’s technical manager at Leonardo’s Space Division, is tracking its movements after it was deployed from a panel similar to the one on which it will fly. This milestone brings Europe one step closer to the Moon.
In this picture, one of the engineers who knows the drill better than anyone else is watching it in action.
Drilling on the Moon means cutting through layers of very cold, abrasive dust and rock called regolith. Prospect’s drill has the power to bore up to one meter deep while searching for traces of water ice.
The drill will extract a sample and transfer it to a miniaturized laboratory, where it will be heated to nearly 1,000 °C.
The results will confirm whether water can be found in the Moon’s coldest craters and, if so, how we can use it and where it comes from.
The Prospect project is not about mining. Drilling allows access to uncontaminated soil while preserving intact samples for accurate scientific analysis. The discovery of water and other volatile substances could revolutionize our journey back to the Moon and beyond.
Prospect, built by Leonardo, will reach the lunar surface aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander as part of the IM-4 mission, under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
More content about Prospect will be available soon. Stay tuned!
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