NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission ends without mapping moon

UPI

2 days ago

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer sits in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado during testing in August 2024. The mission was to investigate the nature of the Moon's water, but controllers lost contact with the spacecraft a day after launch in February. Lockheed Martin photo via NASA
Aug. 4 (UPI) -- NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission to the moon ended in failure after the government agency lost contact with the spacecraft one day after the launch in February and never regained communication despite extensive efforts.
The mission ended Friday, NASA said Monday in a news release.
On Feb. 26, the satellite was part of the IM-2 mission by Intuitive Machines aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin Space, successfully separated from the rocket 38 minutes after launch.
Another spacecraft, the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment, touched down on the lunar surface on March 6 near the moon's south pole. But because the Athena lander was resting in its side inside a crater, the mission lasted only 10 hours instead of 10 days because it couldn't recharge its solar cells.
The Lunard Trailblazer didn't make the 238,000-mile journey from Earth to the moon's surface.
"At NASA, we undertake high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to find revolutionary ways of doing new science," Nicky Fox, associate administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said. "While it was not the outcome we had hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help us to learn and reduce the risk for future, low-cost small satellites to do innovative science as we prepare for a sustained human presence on the moon. Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication in working on and learning from this mission through to the end."
Limited data after the launch determined Lunar Trailblazer's solar arrays were not properly oriented toward the sun. The batteries then were depleted.
NASA said several collaborating organizations worldwide listened for the spacecraft's radio signal and tracked its position.
"As Lunar Trailblazer drifted far beyond the Moon, our models showed that the solar panels might receive more sunlight, perhaps charging the spacecraft's batteries to a point it could turn on its radio," Andrew Klesh, Lunar Trailblazer's project systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said. "The global community's support helped us better understand the spacecraft's spin, pointing, and trajectory. In space exploration, collaboration is critical -- this gave us the best chance to try to regain contact."
Based on ground radar and optical observations, the Lunar Trailblazer was in a slow spin going into deep space. The spacecraft became too distant and its signal would have been too weak even if it got energy.
JPL built the satellites' high-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper imaging spectrometer to detect and map water and minerals.
The Spectrometer has been approved for a future orbital flight.
The Union of Oxford, with funding by the British Space Agency, built the Lunar Thermal Mapper instrument to gather temperature data and determine the composition of silicate rocks and soils to improve understanding why water content varies over time.
"We're immensely disappointed that our spacecraft didn't get to the Moon, but the two science instruments we developed, like the teams we brought together, are world-class," said Bethany Ehlmann, the mission's principal investigator at Caltech. "This collective knowledge and the technology developed will cross-pollinate to other projects as the planetary science community continues work to better understand the Moon's water."
In the 1990s, NASA's Clementine mission detected water on the moon -- the first spacecraft to completely map the lunar surface.
The lunar-mapping missions are intended to further scout surfaces for water that could sustain humans.
The Artemis II is scheduled to reach the moon no earlier than April 26, and a crewed Artemis III is planned for mid-2027 aboard the Orion spacecraft.
Humans have not been on the moon since 1972.