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After a year of preliminary design and several revisions, NASA confirmed the Caltech-led Lunar Trailblazer mission to proceed with final design and construction. Selected in June 2019 with delivery of the flight system scheduled in October 2022, the Lunar Trailblazer mission aims at one of the most surprising discoveries of the decade: the presence of water on the Moon.
The mission is a collaboration led by principal investigator Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary sciences at Caltech, and managed by JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA. Other key partners include spacecraft supplier Lockheed Martin and the University of Oxford, which supplies one of the two Lunar Trailblazer instruments.
“We are excited to pave the way for NASA to use small satellites to answer big questions about planetary science,” says Ehlmann. “We expect Trailblazer to greatly enhance our understanding of something we don’t fully understand: the water cycle on airless bodies. Given the importance of water on the Moon for future robotic and human missions, the Lunar Trailblazer mission team is thrilled to provide the critical basemaps that will guide this future exploration. “
The relatively small Trailblazer satellite, which will measure only 3.5 meters long with its solar panels fully deployed, will spend more than a year orbiting the moon at a height of 100 kilometers, scanning it with two instruments: an infrared spectrometer. short-wave visible built by JPL and a multispectral thermal imaging camera built by the University of Oxford. These tools will determine the amount and shape of water on the Moon, which is not liquid but instead appears as frozen water in cold regions, as free or bound molecules within minerals. As a selection of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) program, Lunar Trailblazer achieves critical science advances as a low-cost, en route mission.
“Lunar Trailblazer has a talented multi-institutional team whose collective efforts have led to a successful formulation phase and confirmation review,” says Calina Seybold, mission project manager at JPL. “I am thrilled that the team has earned the privilege of continuing our final design and manufacturing phase.”
A key partnership is with Denver, Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Space which will design, integrate and test the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. The company brings its expertise from another SIMPLEx mission called Janus, which will explore asteroids, as well as decades of planetary missions across the solar system.
Joshua Wood, manager of the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft at Lockheed Martin, says he is excited about what lies ahead: “Passing this key decision point means we have the green flag to proceed with the production of the spacecraft. I’m very excited to see all the great science that this compact spaceship is sure to bring back. “
A key feature of the Lunar Trailblazer is Caltech’s great role in carrying out the mission. In addition to Ehlmann’s leadership as PI, co-investigator James Dickson, manager of the Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization, will head up the science data system. Mission operations will be exhausted by Caltech’s IPAC, which brings a long experience with the scientific operations of space telescopes. Through a NASA-funded student collaboration option, undergraduate students from Caltech and neighboring Pasadena City College participate in communications and mission development and assist with personnel operations. In addition to JPL, Lockheed Martin, University of Oxford and PCC, the other key partners in the mission are the Applied Physics Laboratory, Brown University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Central Florida.
“Some of the big questions about water on the Moon are: Does it vary with time of day and temperature? Is it related to rock or mobile? Why do some shaded regions harbor water ice while others are empty, and how much is there on the lunar surface? “says Ehlmann.” We can’t wait to answer these questions with the Lunar Trailblazer. “
Learn more about the mission objectives, tools and team here: https://trailblazer.caltech.edu/
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