U.S. will lag behind in utilization of resources on the Moon.

 Copyright 2023 Robert Clark

 Quite annoying that NASA won’t be including any instruments on the VIPER lander at the lunar South pole to detect heavy metals, only ones for detecting water and light elements. Nor will the Astrobotic Peregrine commercial lander. 

 The LCROSS mission provided tantalizing hints of valuable metals from its orbital observations: 

Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds.
Science Oct 21, 2010 2:05 PM EDT.
There is water on the moon … along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That’s according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon’s South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/its-confirmed-there-is-water

 And a Japanese lunar orbiter gave indications of uranium: 

Uranium could be mined on the Moon. Uranium could one day be mined on the Moon after a Japanese spacecraft discovered the element on its surface.
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 4:58PM BST 01 Jul 2009.
The space probe Kaguya detected the radioactive element in samples of the Moon's surface with a gamma-ray spectrometer, along with thorium, potassium, magnesium, silicon, calcium, titanium and iron.
The discovery opens up the possibility of mining operations on a commercial basis or even nuclear power plants being constructed on the Moon.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110423155534/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5711129/Uranium-could-be-mined-on-the-Moon.html

 Note that one of the locations the urianium was detected was the mysterious South Pole Aitken impact basin.

 The later Surveyor landers to the Moon by NASA since the 60’s all contained x-ray spectrometers(XRF) for detecting heavy elements. And all of the Mars landers since the Viking landers in the 70’s either had XRF spectrometers or more accurate alpha-proton x-ray spectrometers(APXS) for detecting heavy elements.

 Moreover, both the just launched Indian lunar south polar lander and Chinese lander to lunar south pole will contain a detector for heavy elements.

The upcoming lunar lander from Japan will also include an X-ray spectrometer for detecting heavy metals:

Japan gearing up to launch small moon lander next month.
By Andrew Jones published about 17 hours ago.
SLIM is scheduled to lift off on Aug. 25.
Also joining the lunar ride will be the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, a JAXA-NASA collaborative mission that also involves participation from the European Space Agency.
https://www.space.com/japan-slim-moon-lander-launch-august-2023

 This lander will not be to the lunar South Pole but this still confirms the point that every other lander to ANY space body, including asteroids and comets, always contains detectors for measuring heavy elements.

Even the little Sojouner rover on the Mars Pathfinder mission had its own alpha-proton x-ray(APXS) spectrometer for measuring heavy elements:

 The APXS is the round instrument in front.

 The Sojourner rover only weighed 25 lbs, 11 kg, and only needed 15 watts to run on, which can be supplied by a few oz of rechargeable lithium batteries. So the weight and power requirements for the APXS instrument itself would have been much smaller than that still.

 It’s really unfathomable that the U.S.’s landers VIPER and Astrobotic Peregrine to the lunar South Pole will be the only ones to ANY space body, probably numbering into the couple of dozen now, that won’t have instruments for detecting heavy elements.

 There’s no guarantee that India or China will share with the U.S. the discovery by their landers of valuable metals or other minerals on the Moon. They would probably figure if the U.S. didn’t see the importance of including such instruments on their own  missions to the lunar South Pole, then that’s their problem.

 These landers to the lunar south pole may return literally world-changing results. There has been speculation that the metal containing asteroid Psyche may contain many trillions of dollars of valuable metals.

 Then in this regard quite notable is this:

Weird 'Anomaly' at the Moon's South Pole May Be a Metal Asteroid's Grave
By Meghan Bartels published June 10, 2019
https://www.space.com/moon-south-pole-anomaly-metal-asteroid-impact.html

 I mentioned at least two independent orbital missions that observed valuable minerals specifically at the lunar South Pole, LCROSS and Kaguya. This article concerns another lunar orbital mission mission, GRAIL, measuring gravity variations on the Moon, that found intense gravity at the South Pole Aitken impact basin. The researchers suggested it was from the impact of a large asteroid, actually a Ceres-sized dwarf planet, emplacing heavy metals there. If so, then it conceivably could have been an asteroid of the Psyche-type containing trillions of dollars of valuable metals.

 Conceivably, the trillions of dollars of valuable metals speculated to be on Psyche could already be just next door!

  Robert Clark