Lunar Trailblazer sets out to find water on the moon

If astronauts plan to spend more than a few days on the moon, they’ll need to find some local resources. One of the most important of those resources is water.

Scientists are pretty sure there is water on the moon, they just don’t know exactly where.

Two probes are heading to the moon to begin to answer that question. They’ll depart on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. The four-day launch window opens at 7:16 PM ET on Feb. 26.

If all goes according to plan, the first of the probes to reach the moon will be a lander called Athena, built by the company Intuitive Machines. The trip to the moon is pretty short.

“It takes about three to four days, depending on where we launch in that launch window,” says Timothy Crain, chief technology officer and co-founder of Intuitive Machines.

“We orbit the moon for two to three days, basically to let the sun move over the landing site,” he says.

Once that happens, the probe can land, as the lander’s solar panels need sun to generate power.

“It takes about 15 minutes once we light the engine, to come down and to do a soft touch landing, Crain says.

The landing site is on a flat top mountain near the lunar south pole called Mons Mouton, a feature named for the mathematician Melba Mouton.

This is Intuitive Machines’ second attempt to land on the moon. It tried a year ago, but the probe tipped over after landing.

“We definitely contacted the ground harder than we expected,” Crain says. “And you know, in the space game, usually, if things don’t work out exactly the way you plan, they don’t work out at all.”

Even though it tipped over, it got a good amount of data before it ran out of power, so Crain is pretty pleased with the first try.

The new lander carries quite an array of tools. One is a drill and spectrometer made by NASA that will look for water under the lunar surface. There’s also a small rover that will be used to test a 4-G local communications network built by Nokia, and a miniature rover small enough to fit in the palm of your hand made by the Japanese firm Dymon Co. Ltd.

Then there’s the Hopper, named for the mathematician Grace Hopper. The name also refers to what the Hopper does: it’s basically a rocket pack that can hop around the landing sight, looking inside of craters that have never been explored.

The same rocket launching the Intuitive Machines lander on its mission is also carrying a spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer. That dishwasher-sized probe is intended to go into orbit around the moon.

“The focus of the mission is trying to understand the abundance and the form and distribution of lunar water and the lunar water cycle,” says Angela Dapremont from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and a member of the Lunar Trailblazer science team. She says scientists are pretty sure there is water on the moon, they’re just not sure what form it’s in.

“Is it molecular water? Is it water ice? Is it hydroxyl?” Dapremont says.

Knowing that makes a big difference when it comes to harvesting the water.

Lunar Trailblazer is one NASA’s new class of small innovative exploratory spacecraft.

One of the intriguing aspects of the mission is that it’s being operated by students in what basically is a small conference room.

Carson L. (Lee) Bennett is an engineer at Caltech and Lunar Trailblazer’s mission manager. He says most deep space probes are run out of NASA’s nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“But for a lot of these smaller spacecraft is now moving to college campuses,” Bennett says.

Lunar Trailblazer separates from the Intuitive Machines lander shortly after takeoff. Because it doesn’t have a very powerful engine, it will take the smaller probe several months to reach the moon and go into the orbit it needs for its scientific mission.