Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Caltech-led Lunar Trailblazer mission on the prowl to probe the abundance, distribution of water on the Moon, as well as the lunar water cycle.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin

NASA has officially declared loss of the space agency’s Lunar Trailblazer designed to map lunar water.

“Despite extensive efforts, mission operators were unable to establish two-way communications after losing contact with the spacecraft the day following its Feb. 26 launch,” a NASA statement explains.

“Without two-way communications,” NASA adds, “the team was unable to fully diagnose the spacecraft or perform the thruster operations needed to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight path.”

Image credits:
Lunar south pole basemap: LROC
PSR detections from Mazarico, et al. (2011)
Crater: Caltech/PCC/Hongyu Cui for Lunar Trailblazer project

Signatures of ice

The NASA/Caltech Lunar Trailblazer was successfully deployed on February 26 as a ride share payload from a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. It was designed to circuit the Moon in patrol mode to detect signatures of ice in reflected light, pinpointing the locales of ice or water trapped in rock at the Moon’s surface.

The spacecraft was developed and built by Lockheed Martin, with the aerospace firm also integrating the craft’s science instruments.

Reporter Leonard David in Lockheed Martin clean room gets up-close view of moonbound Lunar Trailblazer.
Image credit: Barbara David

Curio platform

Lunar Trailblazer utilized the aerospace company’s new Curio platform. Curio is a scalable smallsat spacecraft architecture, designed to aid deep-space exploration and to probe scientific questions in a cost-efficient way.

In an earlier NASA-provided statement to Inside Outer Space, the space agency approved life cycle cost for the mission is $94.1 million.

Lunar Trailblazer was a selection of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) competition.