CLPS PITMS Payload Video

Producers: Jessica Wilde, Scott Bednar Editor: Matthew Schara

What is said in the film

Before NASA returns humans to the Moon, we are sending lots of science and technology. CLPS: Commercial Lunar Payload Services. I have been working my whole lifetime to get a package to the surface of the Moon and operate it for science. My name is Barbara Cohen. I am the principal investigator, or the lead of the science team, for the Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer.

PITMS, the instrument I work on, is going to inform our understanding of the volatile cycle on the Moon — that is water, carbon dioxide, methane, all sorts of fun molecules that we want to measure on the surface of the Moon and in the lunar exosphere. So we are trying to learn about the water at the poles by going back to where it comes from — to the solar wind and micrometeorites that are coming in now and understanding how much is there now, how much could be there in the future, how much was there in the past. We're interested in that atmosphere and what it's made out of and that's what PITMS will monitor. It will sit on the surface and as those molecules bounce around, some of them will bounce into the mass spectrometer and will measure what they're made out of. The reason it's so important to measure the lunar exosphere is because that is a process that's happening today that includes all of the things we're interested in for human exploration.

Our Artemis program is going to the South Pole because there are resources there. If you don't have to bring your water with you, if you can use the water that's there, that saves you a lot of mass going up with your astronauts. So we're trying to explore the water cycle on the Moon to understand whether we can use that water for astronauts and also what it tells us about the history of the Moon for science. Commercial Lunar Payload Services. NASA and American companies working together.

NASA.

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