South Korea's homegrown lunar monitoring payload, which will carry out science experiments as part of the U.S. moon exploration Artemis program, is ready to join the unmanned space mission next year, the science ministry said Monday.

The lunar space environment monitor, developed by the state-run Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, has been completed and will be headed to the headquarters of Intuitive Machines Inc. in Houston, Texas, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.

LUSEM will be loaded on Intuitive Machines' lunar lander, the Nova-C, in 2024 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, to send small robotic landers and rovers with a few science payloads to the surface of the moon through commercial space transportation services to support Artemis.

LUSEM, a sensor that detects high-energy particles with 50 keV, or kiloelectron volts, on the moon's surface, is one of KARI's four science payloads to operate on the lunar surface for CLPS.

The three other science payloads are the Lunar Vehicle Radiation Dosimeter (LVRAD), the Lunar Surface MAGnetometer and the GrainCams for dust particles on the lunar surface.

LUSEM is expected to be installed on Nova-C early next year, and it will be launched on Space X's Falcon 9 launch vehicle in late 2024, according to the Korean science ministry. (Yonhap)