NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Moon Mission Ends
The small satellite was to map the lunar water, but the operators lost contact with the spaceship the day after the launch and could not recover the mission.
The NASA lunar trailblazer ended its mission on the moon on July 31. Despite in -depth efforts, mission operators were unable to establish two -way communications after losing contact with the spaceship the day after its launch on February 26.
The mission aimed to produce high resolution water cards on the surface of the moon and to determine the shape of the water, how much is there and how it changes over time. The cards would have supported the future robotic and human exploration of the moon as well as commercial interests while contributing to the understanding of the water cycles on the bodies without air throughout the solar system.
Lunar Trailblazer shared a journey on the second mission Robotic Lander Lander of intuitive machines, IM-2, which left at 7:4 p.m. am on February 26 in a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center of the Agency in Florida. The small satellite separated as expected from the rocket about 48 minutes after the launch to start its flight to the moon. Caltech ipac mission operators in Pasadena have established communications with the small spacecraft at 8:13 p.m. HNE. The contact was lost the next day.
Without two -way communications, the team has not been able to fully diagnose the spacecraft or carry out the propellant operations necessary to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight trajectory.
“At NASA, we undertake high -risk and high reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to find revolutionary ways to do new science,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Directorate of the Scientific Mission at the NASA headquarters in Washington. “Although this is not the result we hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help us to learn and reduce the risk of future small satellites at low cost to make innovative sciences while we are preparing for a sustained human presence on the moon. Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication in the work and learning this mission at the end. ”
The limited data that the mission team had received from Lunar Trailblazer indicated that the solar tables of the space machine were not properly oriented towards the sun, which caused its exhaustion.
For several months, collaborating organizations around the world – many of which have made their aid – listened to the radio signal of the spaceship and followed its position. Radar and optical observations on the ground indicated that the lunar pioneer was in slow rotation while he was heading further in deep space.
“While Lunar Trailblazer derived far beyond the moon, our models have shown that solar panels could receive more sun, perhaps invoicing the batteries of the spacecraft to a point that it could light its radio,” said Andrew Klesh, engineer of the Lunar Trailblazer project systems at the Jet Nasa Pro Propulsory in Southern California. “The support of the global community has helped us to better understand the rotation, pointing and trajectory of the spaceships. In space exploration, collaboration is critical – it gave us the best chance to try to find contact. ”
However, over time, Lunar Trailblazer has become too far to recover because his telecommunications signals would have been too weak for the mission to receive telemetry and control.
The small volatile and mineral moon clipper with high resolution of the satellite Small (HVM3) The imaging spectrometer was built by JPL to detect and map the locations of water and minerals. The Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) instrument of the mission was built by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and funded by the UK Space Agency to collect temperature data and determine the composition of the rocks and silicate soils to improve the understanding of the reasons why the water content varies over time.
“We are extremely disappointed that our spacecraft did not arrive on the Moon, but the two scientific instruments that we have developed, like the teams we have brought together, are world class,” said Bethany Ehlmann, principal investigator of the mission in Caltech. “This collective knowledge and developed technology are found in other projects while the Planetary Sciences community continues to work to better understand water from the Moon.”
Part of this technology will live in the ultra compact imaging spectrometer built by JPL for the Moon instrument (UCIS-Moon) that NASA has recently selected for a future orbital flight opportunity. The instrument, which has an identical spectrometer design as HVM3will provide the highest spatial resolution data in the moon of surface lunar water and minerals.
Lunar Trailblazer was selected by the Simplex competition (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) of NASA, which offers opportunities to low -cost scientific spatial vehicles to bang with selected primary missions. To maintain the overall cost lower, simplex missions have higher risk posture and less stinte requirements for surveillance and management. This higher risk acceptance strengthens the portfolio of targeted scientific missions from NASA designed to test pioneering mission approaches.
Caltech, who manages the JPL for NASA, led Lunar Trailblazer’s Science Investigation, and the mission operations carried out by the IPAC of Caltech, which included planning, planning and sequencing of all space vessel activities. In addition to the management of Lunar Trailblazer, NASA JPL has provided system engineering, Mission Insurance, The HVM3 Instrument, design and navigation of mission. Lockheed Martin Space provided the spaceship, joined the flight system and supported the operations under contract with Caltech. The University of Oxford has developed and provided the LTM instrument, funded by the British space agency. Lunar Trailblazer, a project of the NASA discovery and lunar exploration program was managed by the NASA planetary mission program office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s scientific mission management in Washington.
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA seat, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Isabel Swafford
Caltech Ipac
626-216-4257
iswafford@ipac.caltech.edu
2025-099
