The mission, a joint effort between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Caltech, and international partners, aimed to map water on the moon’s surface in unprecedented detail – offering insights critical for future crewed exploration, robotic missions and commercial ventures. But the spacecraft never made it that far.
Launched on 26 February aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar mission, Lunar Trailblazer separated from the rocket as planned and made brief contact with operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena. However, communication was lost the following day, halting further control of the spacecraft.
Initial data suggested that the satellite’s solar arrays failed to align properly with the sun, causing its batteries to drain. Without power, the spacecraft was unable to fire its thrusters or maintain its course to the moon. Attempts to regain contact continued for months, with global ground stations volunteering to listen for any signal. Observations indicated the spacecraft had entered a slow, uncontrolled spin and was drifting deeper into space.
“At NASA, we take on high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to push the envelope of what’s possible,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “While this isn’t the outcome we hoped for, every mission teaches us something that sharpens our capabilities for the future.”
Lunar Trailblazer was equipped with two advanced instruments: the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), developed by JPL to detect and analyse lunar water, and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM), built by the University of Oxford and funded by the UK Space Agency to measure surface temperature and rock composition.
Despite the setback, mission leaders remain optimistic about the legacy of the technology. “We’re gutted the spacecraft didn’t make it to the moon,” said Professor Bethany Ehlmann, principal investigator at Caltech, “but the instruments and expertise developed for Trailblazer are world-class and will feed into future missions”.
Some of that tech will live on in NASA’s upcoming UCIS-Moon instrument, which uses the same spectrometer design as the HVM3 and has been selected for a future orbital mission to study lunar water with even greater resolution.
Selected through NASA’s SIMPLEx program which funds low-cost, ride-share missions with higher risk tolerance, Lunar Trailblazer was always intended as a bold experiment. But its brief journey underscores both the promise and the peril of pushing boundaries in space exploration.
Andrew Klesh, the mission’s systems engineer at JPL, noted the global cooperation in trying to rescue the satellite. “We had help from around the world tracking its signal and modelling its trajectory. That teamwork gave us the best shot and reminds us that space exploration is always a collective effort.”
Though the mission has now officially ended, the lessons from Lunar Trailblazer will echo through the next generation of small satellite missions and NASA’s ongoing quest to unlock the secrets of water on the moon.