NASA's Prime-1 (Polar Resources ICE Mining Experiment 1) is designed to demonstrate technology to help scientists better understand crew Artemis Missions before they get on the moon. During a brief lunar mission, the performance of Prime-1 technology gave the NASA team a reason to celebrate.

"The Prime-1 mission proves that our hardware works in the most severe environment we have ever tested," said Janine Captain, a Prime-1 co-sponsor and research chemist at NASA's Kennedy Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "While it may not be fully planned yet, it's a big step forward as we're ready to send astronauts back to the moon and build a sustainable future there."

The IM-2 mission of the Intuitive Machine was launched to the moon from NASA KENNEDY's launch complex 39A on February 26, 2025, as part of the company's second lunar delivery for NASA under the agency's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Service) initiative and Artemis activities. The IM-2 Nova-C Lunar Lander, named Athena, carries Prime-1 and its two instruments: a drill bit called Trident (Regolith and Ice Drill for exploring new terrain) designed to bring lunar soil to the ground; and a mass spectrometer, Mass Spectrometer Observation Moon Operation (MSOLO) to study the drilling interlude of the Trident so that one day may one help provide propellant or breathable oxygen for future Artemis Explorer.

The IM-2 mission landed on March 6 on the surface of the moon, just 1,300 feet (400 meters) from its scheduled landing site, Mons Mouton, the lunar plateau near the South Pole of the Moon. Athena Lander ended the mission by sitting on one side of the crater, preventing it from charging the solar cells.

"We were supposed to have 10 days of running time on the moon, and we were getting closer to 10 hours," said Julie Kleinhenz, chief systems engineer at NASA Prime-1. "That's 10 more hours than most people, so I'm happy to be a part of it."

Kleinhenz spent nearly 20 years studying how to use lunar resources for continuous operations. In-situ resource utilization utilise local natural resources at the mission destination. This reduces release and resupply tasks and greatly reduces the quality, cost and risk of space exploration. As NASA prepares to send humans back to the moon and Mars, support for life, propellants, construction and energy-generating products will become increasingly important for future mission success.

“In-situ resource utilization is key to unlocking long-term exploration, and Prime-1 is helping us lay the foundation for future travelers,” said the captain.

Prime-1 technology is also designed to answer questions about the properties of lunar rocks, such as soil strength. This data may help inform the design of in-situ resource utilization systems that will use local resources to create everything from the landing pad to the rocket fuel in the Alemis and subsequent missions.

"Once we reached the surface of the moon, both Trident and Msolo started to start directly and performed well. From a technical demonstration point of view, 100% of the instrument works," Kleinz said.

Built by Honeybee Robotics (called Trident), the lightweight, low-power reinforced drill bit is 1 meter long and has a rotating and percussion actuator that converts energy into the force required for drilling. The drill bit is designed to stop stopping from any depth commanded from the ground and store its samples on the ground for analysis by MSOLO, a commercial off-the-shelf mass spectrometer modified by engineers and technicians at NASA Kennedy to withstand the harsh lunar environment. To measure the composition of gases near the moon from the lander and the outer layer of the environment, MSOLO can help NASA analyze the chemical composition of lunar soil and study water on the moon's surface.

Once on the moon, the actuators on the drilling rig are carried out as designed, completing multiple motion phases required to drill into the moon's surface. In the command of technicians on Earth, the auger rotates, the drill bit expands to its full range, the percussion system performs hammering motion, and the Prime-1 team opened an embedded core heater in the rig and used an internal thermal sensor to monitor temperature changes.

Although MSOLO is able to perform multiple scans to detect gas, it is believed from the initial data that the detected gas is either man-made, or human, such as gases discharged from traces of spacecraft propellants and Earth's water. Data from Prime-1 accounts for some of the approximately 7.5 GB of data collected during the IM-2 mission, and researchers will continue to analyze the data and publish the results in the coming months.