Topic
Frozen water deposits trapped in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's poles, seen as a key resource for future lunar bases and fuel production.
NASA selected three PRISM science payloads to fly on commercial CLPS landers and survey lunar ice, a possible lava tube and surface hazards for Moon Base. Their findings are meant to shape where and how crews live at an outpost NASA is already planning.
Reality
Chang'e-7 launches Aug. 24 with an orbiter, a rover and a six-legged hopper meant to jump into permanently dark craters. What it measures will constrain where anyone builds a base.
Reality
Researchers at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Durham University costed drinking, hygiene and food water against the Moon's polar ice. How long a settlement lasts turns almost entirely on which ice estimate goes into the model.
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IBM research data scientist Gabby Nyirjesy told Lets Data Science that neighboring map patches went into training and test with no separation between them. The 22% gain over SwinV2-B holds under that one partition.
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A feasibility estimate in Frontiers in Space Technologies divides the lunar polar ice by what a large population would consume. At the inventory the authors call current, the settlements that last for centuries hold 1,000 to 10,000 people.
Reality