NASA's Lunar Trailblazer is nearing completion now that its second and final cutting-edge science instrument has been added to the small spacecraft. Built by the University of Oxford in England and contributed by the UK Space Agency, the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) joins the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), which was integrated with the spacecraft late last year. Together, the instruments will enable scientists to determine the abundance, location, and form of the moon's water.
Led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, Lunar Trailblazer has a mass of about 440 pounds and measures only 11.5 feet wide with its solar panels fully deployed. The small satellite will rely on the LTM instrument to gather temperature data that will reveal the thermal properties of the lunar surface and the composition of silicate rocks and soils.
Launching before the Artemis program's human landings, Lunar Trailblazer will return information about the moon's water, providing maps to guide future robotic and human explorers. Lunar water could be used in a variety of ways, from purifying it as drinking water to processing it for fuel and breathable oxygen.
Lunar Trailblazer was selected by NASA's SIMPLEx program in 2019, and the spacecraft will launch as a secondary payload on the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission, called IM-2. That launch, which will also carry NASA's Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 subsurface ice drill, is expected no earlier than early 2024.
As the sun changes position in the sky during the lunar day, the shadows move. This causes the ice to sublimate, transforming into vapor without passing through a liquid phase. As the water molecules move in the moon's extremely thin atmosphere to other cold places, they can settle once more as a frost. The most likely locations to hold water ice in significant quantities are the always-cold permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles, which are key targets for science and exploration.
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