On Feb 10th, 2009 Nature published an article covering the addition of the Dutch "MoonShot" scientific payload to Odyssey Moon's list of customers planning to land hardware on the lunar surface.

The article quotes Odyssey Moon's Chief Scientist Alan Stern as saying, "The intention is to bring on a new age," referring to an era of new opportunities for scientists to buy rides to space for their hardware, especially if their government isn't going to the moon any time soon.

The article describes the instrument as a "laser-induced breakdown spectrometer," capable of scanning the lunar soil and detecting heavy metals. "You shine the laser and just find out what's there," says Erik Laan, one of the engineers on the project at TNO in Delft, the Netherlands (pictured in previous post).

You can read the full article online at http://www.nature.com.

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