NASA Is Sending a Nuclear-Powered Rover to Hunt for Ice at the Moon’s South Pole
Somewhere near the Moon’s south pole, in a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years, there may be frozen water. NASA now has a rover, a company and a launch date to go find out.
The agency announced on Nov. 7 that Blue Origin won a $94 million contract to deliver a rover called PROMISE (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration) to the south pole. A performance-based option could add another $140 million. NASA is targeting late 2028 for launch, followed by an 18-month mission.
A rover built from spare Mars parts
PROMISE has six wheels and runs on nuclear power. That matters because a night on the Moon lasts roughly two weeks, and solar panels go dark. The rover is designed to keep working through those long nights and inside permanently shadowed regions, where ice is most likely to hide. It will carry a drill, spectrometers, sensors and cameras to study the surface and what lies just beneath it.
NASA is saving money by building it from spare flight components and engineering test models left over from the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will manage the mission and build the rover.
The bigger plan: a Moon Base
PROMISE is one piece of what NASA calls its Moon Base program. The agency also picked eight companies to compete for future cargo deliveries to the Moon under a 10-year contract worth up to $10 billion, and it raised an existing lander contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion. A group of MoonFall drones will scout the south pole before astronauts arrive, reaching places a rover cannot.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that when astronauts return to the Moon, “they will arrive with the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface.”
Why the ice matters
Water ice is fuel, drinking water and breathable air waiting to be mined. Finding out how much is there, and whether it can be reached, is one of the biggest open questions for anyone who wants to live on the Moon. PROMISE is built to answer it.
Sources:
NASA: NASA Awards Moon Base Transportation, Technology, Science Projects (Nov. 7, 2026)