Photos: NASA previews a new water-hunting lunar rover in Oakland – The Mercury News

Before humans return to the Moons surface by 2025 through NASAs Artemis program, the space agency is sending a rover to scope out the hydration situation.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, is about as large as a golf cart. Its expected to spend 100 Earth days searching the moons south polar region for water ice deposits below the surface in 2023.

You can see VIPER for yourself this Memorial Day weekend at Chabot Space & Science Center, which is introducing the first full-scale replica of the robot to the public as part of the NASA Artemis Preview Weekend hosted by NASAs Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The event is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 28 and Sunday, May 29.

VIPERs mission will follow up work done by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite in 2009 that detected evidence of water ice at the Moons poles. VIPER is making the trip to better learn how much water ice is up there and in what form. Scientists at NASAs Ames Research Center in Mountain View are leading the VIPER mission and already created high-resolution maps of the lunar surface to plan routes for the rover.

The Artemis missions will return astronauts to the Moon and land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface.

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Photos: NASA previews a new water-hunting lunar rover in Oakland - The Mercury News