Searching the dark side of the moon: Canadian rover to aid in hunt for water

The Canadian lunar rover could soon help reveal the moon's dark side.

The country's first moon rover is set to put the Canadian Space Agency at the forefront of space exploration, helping in the global search for frozen water on the celestial body.

NASA says the moon takes about 27 days to complete a full rotation on its axis as it orbits earth, leaving the same side visible from the ground at all times. As a result, the far side remains little understood and unexplored.

"That has always piqued everybody's imagination: What is on the other side of the moon?" said Gordon Osinski, principal investigator for the Canadian Lunar Rover Mission.

Osinski's Canadian team, along with international partners, is preparing to send a 30-kilogram rover to the south polar region of the moon in search of preserved frozen water, possibly a few meters below the surface and mixed into the soil.

The discovery of ice could be a stepping-stone to further explorations of the solar system, including missions staffed by humans, said Chris Herd, a scientific investigator on the mission and University of Alberta planetary geologist.

Herd, who has previously worked on the Mars rover mission, said frozen water "can be extracted and used as a resource for the astronauts to survive." He said the ice could also be split into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, reducing the cost of bringing those supplies from Earth.

"It reduces the costs of sending humans to the moon [and] that's the ultimate goal," he said.

Osinski said there's been renewed interest in moon exploration over the last five years, with more emphasis on sending astronauts back there.

The robot rover would play an integral part in realizing that dream, he added.

Christian Sallaberger, CEO of Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, said commercial expansion of the space industry is also playing a big role in reviving interest in revisiting the moon.

In November, Ottawa picked Canadensys to build the lunar rover and help with the scientific instruments meant to be shipped to the moon.

"The costs of the missions have come down, relatively speaking, to what they were in the past," Sallaberger said. "In the '60s, everything was government funded."

The Ontario space company has been working in partnership with six Canadian universities and several international partners from the United States and the United Kingdom.