Author: Erin Morton

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Spacecraft Completes Environmental Testing

A silver and gold spacecraft with one solar array outstretched sits backlit in a large, dark white room.
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft in a clean room after undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space. The tests mark the latest milestone as the mission prepares for launch in the fourth quarter of 2024 with an extended mission window reaching into January 2025. Credit: Lockheed Martin Space

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft recently completed the shaking, chilling, baking, and other testing needed to ensure it can survive launch and the harsh conditions of space. Now that environmental testing is done, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, is putting the orbiter and its science instruments through flight system software tests that simulate key aspects of launch, maneuvers, and the science mission while in orbit around the Moon. At the same time, the operations team led by IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California, is conducting tests to simulate commanding, communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network, and navigation.

Just 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide with its solar panels fully deployed, the small satellite will help scientists determine the abundance, location, and form of water on the Moon, as well as its variation over the course of a lunar day. This data will be key to our understanding of this crucial resource on the Moon for future exploration.

The mission’s two science instruments were integrated with the spacecraft last year. The High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper was developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the Lunar Thermal Mapper is from the University of Oxford and funded by the United Kingdom Space Agency.

Lunar Trailblazer will launch as a “rideshare,” a secondary payload on the second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-2, which is part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Launch preparations are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2024 with an extended mission window reaching into January 2025.

About a month prior to launch, the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft will ship from Lockheed Martin to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After final checkouts, it will be integrated into the launch vehicle.

The project is led by Principal Investigator Bethany Ehlmann of Caltech and managed by JPL, which is also providing systems engineering, navigation, and mission assurance. Caltech manages JPL for the agency.

Lunar Trailblazer is part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, which provides opportunities for low-cost, high-risk science missions that are responsive to requirements for flexibility. These lower-cost missions serve as an ideal platform for technical and architecture innovation, contributing to NASA’s science research and technology development objectives. SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. IPAC leads mission operations, including planning, scheduling, and sequencing all science and spacecraft activities.

NASA Continues Lunar Trailblazer Mission

NASA announced Wednesday that its Lunar Trailblazer mission is approved to go forward, targeting a launch in mid-2023. NASA confirmed Lunar Trailblazer in 2020 as part of the agency’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program to provide an understanding of the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon, as well as the lunar water cycle.

The agency evaluated the Lunar Trailblazer mission after cost overruns were reported by the project, which is led by Principal Investigator Dr. Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The overruns were communicated by Lockheed Martin, the flight system integrator. SIMPLEx projects have a higher risk posture and lighter oversight and management requirements to maintain a lower overall mission cost; however, the integrator found that mission success required additional engineering and design efforts that exceeded the original estimate and resulted in an overrun.

Since that notification, the project partners have worked to fully understand the sources and overall impact of the cost overrun, and they have replanned the remaining work and costs to deliver the mission for a total increase of $8 million. The mission will also implement changes to reduce programmatic risks and seek out more operational efficiencies going forward.

Mission proposals for SIMPLEx program were cost capped at $55 million. The updated mission total of $72M includes previously agreed-to changes to the mission’s implementation, including spacecraft vendor, launch provider and launch date, among others.

The team continues to work on spacecraft assembly, having just begun flight system integration at Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft’s two science instruments – the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper from JPL, and the Lunar Thermal Mapper from the University of Oxford, funded by the United Kingdom Space Agency – are scheduled to be delivered before the end of the year. The next milestone is an operational readiness review of tools and procedures for mission operations. Mission operations will be conducted from the Caltech campus.

The spacecraft will arrive at the Moon and begin its science mapping approximately six months after its mid-2023 launch. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch as a secondary payload on the second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-2.

The small satellite mission is part of NASA’s SIMPLEx program, which provides opportunities for low-cost, high risk science missions that are responsive to requirements for flexibility. These lower cost missions serve as an ideal platform for technical and architecture innovation, contributing to NASA’s science research and technology development objectives. SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama as part of the Discovery Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer to Launch 2023, Subject to Cost Review

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission is now scheduled to launch in mid-2023, around two years ahead of its original timeline. The decision means the spacecraft, targeted for completion by spring 2023, will skip a previously planned two-year storage period and move straight to launch.

Lunar Trailblazer, a mission selected under NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, is a small satellite designed to provide an understanding of the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon, as well as the lunar water cycle.

As a SIMPLEx mission, the spacecraft launches via “rideshare,” a secondary payload on a larger mission’s rocket. Lunar Trailblazer was originally manifested as a rideshare on the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), launching in 2025. As announced in June, however, NASA amended the mission agreement, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Lunar Trailblazer for the principal investigator at Caltech, signed a contract in early August for it to fly as a secondary payload on the second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-2. That IM-2 lunar delivery, carrying NASA’s PRIME-1 subsurface ice drill, is scheduled to launch in mid-2023.

Separately, a continuation/termination review will be held later this fall to assess issues that led to cost overruns reported by the Lunar Trailblazer project. In June, mission spacecraft subcontractor Lockheed Martin provided notice of recent cost overruns. SIMPLEx mission proposals were cost capped at $55M.

NASA’s SIMPLEx program provides opportunities for low-cost, risk-tolerant science missions that are selected with the understanding that they can be responsive to requirements for flexibility. These lower cost missions serve as an ideal platform for technical and architecture innovation, contributing to NASA’s science research and technology development objectives.