Puli Lunar Water Snooper

IM-2 · landed · commercial payload

A palm-sized neutron spectrometer (10 x 10 x 3.4 cm, under 400 g) built from modified commercial CMOS image sensors with neutron-sensitive coatings. It counts thermal and epithermal neutrons to estimate hydrogen, a proxy for water ice, in the top meter of regolith. On IM-2 it rode on Intuitive Machines' hopper, to measure inside a permanently shadowed crater.

PI: Tibor Pacher (founder and head of Puli Space Technologies)
Built by: Puli Space Technologies (Budapest, Hungary) (company)

Technology	science instrument (miniature neutron spectrometer, water prospecting)
Moon Base need	DN-007 L, DN-013 L (The study's reading. Neutron counts give hydrogen in the top meter at a point, the in-situ ground truth DN-007 L says does not exist; hydrogen-bearing volatiles bear on DN-013 L. NASA's challenge release ties such instruments to lunar resource prospecting in general, not to a gap.)
Route onto CLPS	commercial; Not a NASA selection for flight. PLWS won places in NASA's 'Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload' prize challenges (2020, and second place in the sequel in 2022), after which NASA said it would evaluate the winners for a future mission. Puli then teamed with Intuitive Machines to fly it on the hopper; the unit was delivered to Intuitive Machines by September 2022. In January 2025 ESA agreed to buy the resulting data, ESA's first such data purchase.
Timeline	first funding 2020 (NASA challenge prize); first flight test not in public sources; selected 2022 (delivered to Intuitive Machines by September 2022); launch 2025-02-26; landing 2025-03-06
On the Moon	partly operated
FO	none

Flights before the Moon

None found in the public sources.

Heritage hardware

• commercial parts and ground tests: Built from commercial parts (modified CMOS sensors, an FPGA). For the NASA challenge Puli delivered a flight unit and two qualification units, tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Puli traces its company heritage to its Google Lunar XPRIZE team. No flight of PLWS before IM-2 is named in public sources.

"COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) based system."
— hou.usra.edu: 1162.pdf, LPSC 2024 abstract 1162

"Each team delivered one flight unit and two qualification units to NASA for testing earlier this year."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

"deliver three working examples for testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena"
— NASA award for Puli Space Technologies

Funding before the lunar flight

• NASA prize money from the 'Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload' challenges, run by the NASA Tournament Lab (STMD Prizes, Challenges and Crowdsourcing) through HeroX. NASA says the four stage-2 teams shared $675,000 for development and Puli got $25,000 more for second place; Puli says it also won a $30,000 prize in the 2020 round. These are prize payments, not SBIR or USAspending awards, so no amount is entered here. (NASA STMD prize challenge (NASA Tournament Lab); 2020-2022): amount not in public sources

"These four teams shared $675,000 in award money to support development."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

"Puli Space Technologies will receive $25,000 for second place."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

"The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in STMD, managed the challenges."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

"won the $30,000 grand prize in NASA's "Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload" challenge in the summer of 2020"
— NASA award for Puli Space Technologies, Hungarian-American chamber, 2022

How it got onto CLPS

"Second place winner: Puli Lunar Water Snooper by [Puli Space Technologies]"
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions, 4 May 2022

"Addition of new Puli Space payload (Puli Lunar Water Snooper), which has been"
— NTRS 20220013035, hopper FY2022 review: 'delivered to IM for integration'

"ESA has made history by entering its first-ever exploration Data Buy agreement with Puli Space Technologies"
— pulispace.com: PuliSpacePressReleaseESAsignsfirstevercommerciallunarexplorationdatabuy…, Puli press release, 15 Jan 2025

On the Moon

PLWS rode on the hopper, which never left the lander because Athena lay on its side, so it made no measurements in a shadowed crater. Puli Space says PLWS operated for 38 minutes on the Moon and sent data to Earth (a company statement, reported by Daily News Hungary). What ESA received is not in public sources.

"Due to the off-nominal landing orientation, the Hopper surface operations were constrained and it did not deploy from the lander."
— TechPort project 116372, description

"operated for 38 minutes on the Moon, sending data to Earth amid frigid conditions"
— First time in the history of Hungarian space exploration: Puli 'water snooper' operates for 38 mi…

FO's role

Grade: none. No FO project, flight or report names PLWS or Puli Space. Its NASA support came through a different STMD route, a NASA Tournament Lab prize challenge, which tested units on the ground at JPL but bought no flight. Prize winners that need a flight test are a gap the study notes, not an FO link.

"NASA will evaluate the three winning technologies for potential accommodation on a future mission."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

Who built it

"Hungary’s Puli Space Technologies Ltd. provided the Puli Lunar Water Snooper to collect water ice data and radiation measurements."
— Falcon 9 launches second lunar mission of 2025 with IM-2 lander - NASASpaceFlight.com

"said Puli Space Technologies Founder Dr. Tibor Pacher"
— pulispace.com: PuliSpacePressReleaseESAsignsfirstevercommerciallunarexplorationdatabuy…, Puli press release, 15 Jan 2025

Moon Base need

"There are no ground truth measurements that characterize shallow bulk water ice on the lunar surface"
— Moon to Mars knowledge base: DN-007 L: In situ measurements of the horizontal and vertical distribution, abundance, and physical makeup of shallow bulk water ice

"Puli Space Technologies’ Puli Lunar Water Snooper identifies hydrogen and all hydrogen-bearing volatiles, like water-ice."
— Mini Crowdsourced Payloads Could Support NASA’s Artemis Missions

Open questions

• What data did PLWS return on IM-2, and what did ESA receive under its data buy? Not in public sources.
• Puli's own development cost, other funders, and the value of the ESA data purchase: not in public sources.
• Was PLWS ever flown (balloon, parabolic, suborbital) before IM-2? Not in public sources.