NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small satellite designed to map lunar water, lost contact with the spacecraft just one day after its February 26 launch. The mission aimed to provide high-resolution maps of water on the Moon’s surface and study its composition.
The spacecraft was part of the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission, IM-2, which lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 26 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. However, contact with Lunar Trailblazer was lost at 8:13 p.m. EST the next day, and despite extensive efforts, the team was unable to recover the mission.
Data retrieved by the team indicated that the spacecraft’s solar arrays were not properly oriented towards the Sun, causing its batteries to become depleted. The limited data also suggested that the spacecraft was in a slow spin as it headed into deep space.
The global community came together to support the mission, with organizations from around the world collaborating to track the spacecraft’s position and listen for its radio signal. However, as time passed, Lunar Trailblazer became too distant to recover, making it impossible to regain contact.
Despite the setback, NASA is committed to using the technology developed during the Lunar Trailblazer mission in future projects. The mission’s High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) imaging spectrometer will live on in the Ultra Compact Imaging Spectrometer for the Moon (UCIS-Moon) instrument, which was recently selected for a future orbital flight opportunity.
The failure of Lunar Trailblazer serves as a reminder of the challenges associated with space exploration, but it also highlights the importance of collaboration and innovation.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/small-satellite-missions/lunar-trailblazer/nasas-lunar-trailblazer-moon-mission-ends