CHENNAI, Aug 5: US Space Agency NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer ended its mission to the Moon on July 31.
Despite extensive efforts, mission operators were unable to establish two-way communications after losing contact with the spacecraft the day following its February. 26 launch.
The small satellite was to map lunar water, but operators lost contact with the spacecraft the day after launch and were unable to recover the mission.
The mission aimed to produce high-resolution maps of water on the Moon’s surface and determine what form the water is in, how much is there, and how it changes over time.
The maps would have supported future robotic and human exploration of the Moon as well as commercial interests while also contributing to the understanding of water cycles on airless bodies throughout the solar system,
NASA said in an update today.
Lunar Trailblazer shared a ride on the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission, IM-2, which lifted off at 7:16 p.m. EST (4.45 am IST) on February 26 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The small satellite separated as planned from the rocket about 48 minutes after launch to begin its flight to the Moon.
Mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena established communications with the small spacecraft at 8:13 p.m. EST (5.43 am).
However, the contact was lost the next day.
Without two-way communications, the team was unable to fully diagnose the spacecraft or perform the thruster operations needed to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight path.
“At NASA, we undertake high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to find revolutionary ways of doing new science,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate
at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“While it was not the outcome we had hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help
us to learn and reduce the risk for future, low-cost small satellites to do innovative science as we prepare for a sustained human presence on the Moon. Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team
for their dedication in working on and learning from this mission through to the end”, Nicky said.
The limited data the mission team had received from Lunar Trailblazer indicated that the spacecraft’s solar arrays were not properly oriented toward the Sun, which caused its batteries to become depleted.
(UNI_
Follow our WhatsApp channel
