Two space mining missions are blasting off this week, with one heading to the southern-most point ever visited on the moon’s surface.
A robotic moon lander called Athena will embark on Intuitive Machine’s second mission to the moon.
It made history a year ago by becoming the first private company to successfully land on the moon’s surface – although the lander did fall over.
Athena will be carrying a set of instruments and a drill to study the rocks and soil beneath the moon’s surface and will help scientists identify where possible water sources could be.
Read more: The space race for moon water
After lift-off, currently scheduled for shortly after midnight on 27 February, Athena will aim to land on 6 March and then spend ten days gathering data.
There are also moon rovers aboard. One is a suitcase-sized hopper which will jump into a deep crater where scientists suspect there is ice and snap some images before jumping back out.
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Catching a lift with Athena before it breaks off on its own is Odin, a robotic spacecraft that will perform a flyby mission of an asteroid.
Odin’s mission marks US company AstroForge’s first attempt to hunt for platinum in space.
It should take just five days to reach the far side of the moon, but will then wait for another 300 days in deep space before approaching its target asteroid.
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It will then gather images of the asteroid in preparation for the company’s next mission, Vestri, which will land on the asteroid and begin extraction.
The same rocket, a SpaceX Falcon-9, will also launch a NASA-developed moon-mapping satellite called Lunar Trailblazer.
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The Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the moon detecting water on the surface.
According to NASA, it will help scientists “determine the form, abundance, and distribution of water across the lunar surface”.
There’s a race to find water on the moon because it may make it feasible to build a base there, making deep space exploration easier.
