An artist illustration of NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. (Credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter)

Before sending the first woman and next man to the moon, NASA will send a golf cart-sized rover to the lunar south pole to search for sources of ice water. The space agency hopes to have the rover exploring the moon’s surface by December 2022.

The new spacecraft was announced Friday at the International Astronautical Congress, a yearly conference where much of the