NASA picked a payload to probe a lunar pit that may open into a lava-tube shelter

NASA has chosen three new science payloads for the Moon, and one of them, GIMLI, is built to look beneath a single hole in the lunar surface. The agency announced the picks on Sept. 30, 2026, under its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon program, known as PRISM. GIMLI’s target is the Marius Hills Pit, an opening that may connect to an extensive underground lava tube.

The reason a hole matters is shelter. Underground tubes could give astronauts steadier temperatures and natural shielding from radiation and impacts, which is the quality NASA says it wants to map as it plans a lunar base.

What NASA selected under PRISM

According to the NASA release, the three investigations will fly to the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative as part of the Moon Base Program. NASA says the payloads will help researchers understand lunar resources, map natural shelters and assess environmental hazards. The release gives no funding amounts, no named lander for any of the three, and no launch or landing dates, so the timing of any of this work remains open.

The first payload is the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station for the South Pole, or LEMS-SP, led by Mehdi Benna of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It is an autonomous station meant to run for a long period, watching for falling micrometeoroids and tracking volatiles in the Moon’s thin outer gas layer. A short-period seismometer would register moonquakes, which NASA says supports hazard assessments for Moon Base hardware. The third, the Depth Imager with Spectral and Color Optics, or DISCO, is led by Ariel Deutsch of NASA Ames Research Center and is billed as making the first direct measurements from the lunar surface of ice in micro-cold traps.

DISCO also studies how rocket exhaust disturbs the ground and how stable the surface is for mobility. That work is aimed at safe surface operations and at technologies for turning ice into a usable resource.

Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, framed the set in a line the agency quoted: “NASA Science is building the ultimate interplanetary survival guide.” Brad Bailey, director of the Exploration Science Strategy Integration Office, said each new PRISM selection strengthens NASA’s ability to deliver ambitious science to the lunar surface. The ScienceDaily summary of the release, dated Oct. 8, repeats both statements.

GIMLI and the Marius Hills Pit

GIMLI stands for Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation, and its principal investigator is Nathaniel Putzig of the Planetary Science Institute. The institute’s own announcement of Oct. 1 uses the name Than Putzig and describes him as associate director and senior scientist. The NASA release says the instrument suite will scan beneath the surface to determine whether the pit leads into a large lava tube, and notes that such a tube could protect against temperature extremes, radiation and micrometeoroids.

The hardware is spelled out in a separate ScienceDaily report on the mission: ground-penetrating radar supplied by the Norwegian Space Agency, an active-source seismic system and a gravimeter built by Honeybee Robotics, and cameras to photograph the surface and the exposed pit walls. Honeybee, a Blue Origin company, also handles project management, integrates the instruments onto a lander and rover, and co-leads operations with the institute after landing. Co-investigators come from Boise State University, Johns Hopkins University, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the University of Oslo.

The mission would hunt for an underground void extending from the pit and, if it finds one, estimate its dimensions. Measurements of the material around and beneath the pit may also show how it formed.

What the mission could settle, and what it cannot yet

Putzig said that “it’s long been a desire of mine to reintroduce intentional active-source seismic methods to planetary science,” in the words reported by IEEE Spectrum. The PSI announcement adds that he says the method has largely gone unused since the Apollo surveys. Gareth Morgan, the deputy principal investigator, said that confirming a substantial lava tube would offer insight into how volcanism operated on the Moon. The pit walls expose regolith and lava-flow layers, which the team says could show whether separate eruptions were spaced far apart in time.

Much stays unanswered. None of the sources reviewed gives the pit’s size or depth, names the lander and rover providers, or sets a launch date, and the ScienceDaily write-up says only that GIMLI will use geophysical measurements to investigate what lies beneath. Whether a tube exists at all is the question the mission is designed to test, and the NASA wording remains conditional: the pit may connect to one, and if large underground spaces are confirmed, they could offer an advantage for future human exploration.

The delivery route is also a constraint. NASA’s CLPS program page says the agency has awarded 17 lunar deliveries to five vendors, carrying more than 60 payloads under contracts with a combined maximum value of $2.6 billion through November 2028. GIMLI depends on a lander and rover from that pool, so its schedule will follow whichever delivery NASA assigns, a choice the agency has not yet announced for this payload.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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