Rather than having to wait two years for its launch, NASA has identified an alternative route for a modest lunar orbiter project.
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The NASA Science Mission Directorate undertook the initiative – SIMPLEx (Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) and selected Lunar Trailblazer in the year 2019. The Lunar Trailblazer mission, directed by Principal Investigator Bethany Ehlmann (Caltech), and supervised by JPL’s Calina Seybold and Andy Klesh, deploys sophisticated infrared sensors in orbit for the temporal and geographical characterisation of lunar water and cold traps. Lunar Trailblazer seeks to understand the kind, amount, and distribution of water on Mars as well as the characteristics of the lunar water cycle. Such information is essential for comprehending how volatiles are delivered to the Earth-Moon system and will help with the planning of upcoming exploration.
The second lunar rover mission by Adaptive Machines, termed IM-2 and part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) project, will now launch with the Lunar Trailblazer mission as a secondary payload, according to Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, in a presentation on June 21 to the Planetary Science Advisory Committee. According to her, that operation will take off in approximately a year.
The IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe)Â mission, which is currently planned to launch no earlier than early 2025, will carry Lunar Trailblazer as one of many ride-share payloads. The construction of IMAP itself set the timeline, with Lunar Trailblazer’s completion anticipated around early 2024.
Insights on the Mission
The concentration of water on the moon is being studied by Lunar Trailblazer using a spectrometer and thermal mapper; the results could aid in future robotics and humanoid missions. According to Ehlmann, the spacecraft’s systems integration assessment was successful in May, and completion is anticipated for early 2024.
The project was one of three NASA missions chosen in 2019 as a subset of the SIMPLEx programme of small planetary scientific missions, with budget constraints of $55 million and the use of rideshare deploy options. With their launches, all three have experienced difficulties.
The NASA mission Lunar Trailblazer won’t be the first to use a CLPS launch. A CubeSat named Lunar Flashlight was initially intended to be launched on the Artemis 1 mission, the very first Space Launch System mission. However, propulsion system issues prevented it from being delivered in time for integration onto the rocket last summer.
Similar Projects
EscaPADE, (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers), a second SIMPLEx mission to explore the interaction of the Martian atmosphere with the solar wind, was once planned to launch alongside NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission. EscaPADE was eventually taken out of that mission after Psyche’s launch on a Falcon Heavy changed its trajectory, making it impossible to land on Mars during a flyby. EscaPADE is currently progressing with a revamp, although no launch date has been set.
A Lunar Flashlight scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center – Barbara Cohen, stated at a lunar science workshop in May that the spacecraft was now expected to launch as a secondary payload on the IM-1 lunar rover mission by Sensible Systems, scheduled for later this year.
