A Spunky NASA Probe on a Mission to Map the Moon’s Water 2025

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer is officially in Florida and integrated with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in anticipation of its launch into space later this month.

The petite satellite is set to launch no earlier than February 26 from Kennedy Space Center, with the ultimate objective of getting into lunar orbit and taking a full assessment of the water content on our planet’s rocky satellite. Water molecules exist on the Moon’s sunlit surface, but the water is lost to space, raising the still-open question of how water on the lunar surface is replenished. The Lunar Trailblazer could provide answers.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory described the complicated maneuver that will get the Trailblazer in a position to reach lunar orbit in a release published this week.

Lunar Trailblazer will separate from its rocket approximately 48 minutes after launch, the release stated, and head towards the Moon for a minimum two-year mission.

The Trailblazer is outfitted with two instruments. One is its High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper, or HVM³, and the other is its Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) infrared multispectral imager. The former will map the minerals and water on the Moon’s surface—including the stuff in its craters, whose shadows cloak their bottoms in darkness and whose depths are prospective harbors for water ice. The LTM will also map minerals, but also the thermal properties of the Moon’s surface.

“The LTM instrument precisely maps the surface temperature of the Moon while the HVM³ instrument looks for the spectral signature of water molecules,” said Neil Bowles, LTM instrument scientist at the University of Oxford, in an earlier JPL release. “Both instruments will allow us to understand how surface temperature affects water, improving our knowledge of the presence and distribution of these molecules on the Moon.”

The spacecraft weighs just 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and is 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) across when its solar panels are fully deployed.

“Unlike the norm for small missions that may only have a very focused, singular purpose, Lunar Trailblazer has two high-fidelity instruments onboard,” said Andy Klesh, the Trailblazer’s project systems engineer at JPL, in the new release. “We are really punching above our weight.”

It will take the spacecraft between four and seven months to get to the Moon depending on the launch date; regardless of that date, the mission will make use of the gravitational assists to get to the Moon.

After launch, the mission will undergo two correction maneuvers and a mid-course correction before flybys scheduled for March 3 and May 8. The team plans to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit on July 7.

“The initial boost provided by the rocket will send the spacecraft past the moon and into deep space, and its trajectory will then be naturally reshaped by gravity after several lunar flybys and loops around Earth. This will allow it to be captured into lunar orbit with minimal propulsion needs,” said Gregory Lantoine, the mission’s design and navigation lead at JPL, in the same release. “It’s the most fuel-efficient way to get to where we need to go.”

The spacecraft’s final orbital position will be about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface. The Trailblazer will orbit the Moon 12 times a day, surveilling the satellite’s surface at different times of day during its daily rotation.

Ultimately, the Lunar Trailblazer’s data will help scientists better understand the Moon’s surface and better prepare NASA for its upcoming Artemis missions, which aim to return humankind to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo missions.