TL;DR
Every serious plan to live on the Moon assumes there is water frozen in the dark craters at its poles: water to drink, to split into oxygen to breathe, and to turn into rocket fuel. That makes ice the oil field of the next space age, and the United States and China both want bases next to it. But nobody has actually measured it on the ground, let alone dug any up. NASA's one drill attempt came up dry in 2025. Now both countries have ice hunters scheduled for 2027: NASA has revived its VIPER rover, and China's Chang'e-7, with a robot hopper built to jump into a frozen crater, is waiting for a new launch window after being pulled off the pad in August. Whoever finds usable ice first gets to choose where the first permanent base goes.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 6 milestones, starting with "Chang'e-7 launches by 2027"; and every source.