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If astronauts ever want to spend more than a few days on the moon, they're going to need to find some local resources - like water. Scientists are pretty sure there's water up there somewhere. They just don't know exactly where. And so two lunar missions will try to start answering that question. Joe Palca tells us a four-day launch window for those missions opens tonight.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: If all goes according to plan, the first of the probes to reach the moon will be a lander built by the company Intuitive Machines. The trip to the moon is pretty short.
TIM CRAIN: It takes about three to four days, depending on where we launch in that launch window.
PALCA: Tim Crain is chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines.
CRAIN: We arrive at the moon. We orbit the moon for two to three days, basically to let the sun move over the landing site.
PALCA: The lander's solar panels need sun to generate power.
CRAIN: And it takes about 15 minutes, once we light the engine, to come down and to do a soft-touch landing.
PALCA: The landing site is near the lunar south pole. This is Intuitive Machines' second attempt to land on the moon. They tried a year ago, but the probe kind of tipped over after landing.
CRAIN: We definitely contacted the ground harder than we expected. And, you know, in the space game, usually, if things don't work out exactly the way you plan, they don't work out at all.
PALCA: But even though it tipped over, they got a good amount of data before it ran out of power, so Crain is pretty pleased with the first try. The new lander carries quite an array of tools. One is a drill made by NASA that will look for water under the lunar surface. There's also a small rover that will be used to test a 4G local communications network built by Nokia.
CRAIN: So now you've got a drill drilling. You've got a rover roving, and then we've got a hopper.
PALCA: The hopper is basically a rocket pack that can bop around the landing site, looking inside of craters that have never been explored. The same rocket launching the Intuitive Machines lander on its mission is also carrying a spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer. That dishwasher-sized probe is intended to go into orbit around the moon.
ANGELA DAPREMONT: The focus of the mission is trying to understand the abundance and the form and distribution of lunar water and the lunar water cycle.
PALCA: Angela Dapremont is from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. She says, yes, scientists are pretty sure there is water on the moon. They're just not sure what form it's in.
DAPREMONT: Is it molecular water? Is it water ice?
PALCA: Knowing that makes a big difference when it comes to making use of the water. Lunar Trailblazer is one of NASA's new class of small, innovative exploratory spacecraft. One of the intriguing aspects of the mission is that it's being operated in part by students in what basically is a small conference room.
Lee Bennett is an engineer at Caltech and Lunar Trailblazer's mission manager. He says most deep space probes are run out of NASA's nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
LEE BENNETT: But for a lot of these smaller spacecraft is now moving to college campuses.
PALCA: Lunar Trailblazer separates from the Intuitive Machines lander shortly after takeoff. Because its engine is not very powerful, it will take the smaller probe several months to reach the moon and go into the orbit it needs for its scientific mission.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palca.
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