NASA’s micromission Lunar Trailblazer will take macroscopic measurements of the lunar surface in 2025

NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission is scheduled to return astronauts to the moon by as early as April 2026. The last time astronauts were on the moon was the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Artemis II will utilize NASA’s Space Launch System. This is an extremely powerful rocket that enables manned space exploration beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The four-person crew will travel on the Orion spacecraft, which the agency launched into lunar orbit and returned safely during the Artemis 1 mission.

But before Artemis II, NASA plans to send two missions to scout the surface of the moon’s south pole in search of resources that will sustain human space travel and enable new scientific discoveries.

Planetary geologists like me are interested in data from one of these two reconnaissance missions, Lunar Trailblazer. Data from this mission will help us understand how water forms and behaves on rocky planets and moons.

Start with scientific exploration

PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment) will be aboard the lunar module. It is scheduled to be released in January 2025.

The lander carries two instruments. These are the regolith and ice drill (TRIDENT) for exploring new terrain, and the mass spectrometer (MSOLO) for lunar surface observation. TRIDENT will dig up to 3 feet (1 meter) to extract lunar soil samples, and MSOLO will assess the soil’s chemical composition and water content.

Lunar Trailblazer, a satellite launched by the same Falcon 9 rocket, will also participate in the lunar mining experiment.

Think of this setup as a multi-million dollar satellite Uber pool, or a rideshare where multiple missions share a single rocket, escaping Earth’s gravity while minimizing fuel usage.

Planetary scientist Bethany Ehrman is Lunar Trailblazer’s principal investigator and leads a steering team of scientists and students on the Caltech campus. Trailblazer is NASA’s Small Innovative Mission for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx).

These missions are intended to provide practical operational experience at a lower cost. The budget for each SIMPLEx mission is capped at $55 million, and Trailblazer is slightly over budget at $80 million. Even if it was over budget, the mission would cost about a quarter of a typical robotic mission from NASA’s Discovery program. Discovery Program missions typically cost about $300 million, with a maximum budget of $500 million.

Build a small but powerful satellite

Decades of small satellite (SmallSat) research and development have opened up the possibilities for Trailblazer. SmallSat makes very specific measurements and complements data obtained from other instruments.

Multiple SmallSats working together in a constellation can take different measurements simultaneously to obtain a high-resolution view of the Earth or Moon’s surface.

SIMPLEx missions can use these SmallSats. Their small size and affordability allow researchers to study problems with higher technical risks. For example, the Lunar Trailblazer uses off-the-shelf parts to keep costs down.

These low-cost, high-risk experimental missions could help geologists better understand the origins of the solar system, what it’s made of, and how it has changed over time. Lunar Trailblazer focuses specifically on mapping the Moon.

A brief timeline of water discovery on the moon

Scientists have long been fascinated by the surface of our closest celestial neighbor, the Moon. In the mid-17th century, astronomers incorrectly characterized the ancient volcanic eruption as a lunar sea, derived from the Latin word for “sea.”

Almost two centuries later, astronomer William Pickering’s calculations suggested that the moon had no atmosphere. This led him to conclude that there could not be water on the moon’s surface, because water would evaporate.

But in the 1990s, NASA’s Clementine mission detected water on the moon. Clementine was the first mission to completely map the surface of the Moon, including the lunar poles. This data detected at low resolution the presence of ice within permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.

The first detection of water by scientists prompted further exploration. NASA launched the Lunar Probe in 1998 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. The Indian Space Research Organization launched the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008 carrying the Lunar Mineral Mapper M3. M3 was not designed to detect liquid water, but unexpectedly it was able to do so. It can be found on the moon’s surface where it is exposed to sunlight.

Collectively, these missions will provide a map of how hydrated minerals (minerals that contain water molecules in their chemical composition) and ice water are distributed on the lunar surface, especially in cold, dark, permanently shadowed regions. did.

New mission, new science

But how do the temperature and physical state of the moon’s water change with changes in sunlight and crater shadows?

The Lunar Trailblazer hosts two instruments: the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) and the High Resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), an evolution of the M3 instrument.

The LTM instrument will map surface temperatures, and HVM3 will measure how the moon’s rocks absorb light. These measurements make it possible to detect and distinguish between water and ice conditions in liquids.

These instruments work together to provide thermal and chemical measurements of hydrous lunar rocks. They will measure water at different times during a lunar day (about 29.5 Earth days) and try to determine how the water’s chemical composition changes depending on time of day and location on the moon.

These results allow researchers to know whether water exists in solid or liquid phase.

Scientific significance and future developments

There are three main theories as to where the moon’s water came from. It could be water that has been stored in the moon’s interior, in its mantle layer, since the moon’s formation. Some geological processes may have caused it to slowly flow to the surface over time.

Alternatively, the water could have arrived on an asteroid or comet that hit the moon’s surface. It may even have been produced by interaction with the solar wind, a stream of particles coming from the sun.

‘Lunar Trailblazer’ sheds light on these theories and helps researchers explore how water behaves on rocks like the Moon, whether future astronauts will be able to use water, and many other questions. It could help advance such big scientific questions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.