Sensing the Moon

Image: A new sensor to identify lunar volatiles is being assembled in a clean room at The Open University, UK ahead of some exciting missions to the Moon. The Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (ITMS) imaged above is a part of an instrument that will detect lunar volatiles from both the extremely thin atmosphere of the Moon and from the lunar soil. Its name is the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer (EMS), a the key element of NASA's Astrobotic mission that will fly to the Valles Mortis region of the Moon in 2...