Project Prospect: Drilling the moon

[PB666]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36786915

There you have it 2021, a Russian firecracker with a Euro drill on it.

 

Edited July 14, 2016 by PB666

[wumpus]

How deep can you go for 8 million (I'm guessing that is for the first stage study, but 5 years will go by quick if they try to fund each separate stage individually)?  And what exactly are you expecting in Lunar geology?  I'd assume that it more or less hardened into a uniform ball and everything you find on the surface is a mix of lunar rock (churned by meteors) and the bits of meteors themselves.  Hopefully they will be able to guess that all of the sample isn't meteor, so presumably the majority is native moon (and what you mostly find if you dug deeper).

I wonder if this is cheaper than a rover that would move around and pick up rocks?