NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer now launching in mid-2023; will map water on Moon’s surface

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission will now launch in mid-2023, around two years ahead of its original timeline, to map water on the Moon's surface and determine its abundance, location, form, and how it changes over time.

The mission was originally manifested as rideshare on the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), launching in 2025. The spacecraft will now fly as a secondary payload on the second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-2, which will carry NASA's PRIME-1 subsurface ice drill.

"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," NASA said in a statement.

The Lunar Trailblazer mission was selected under NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx), a program that provides opportunities for low-cost, risk-tolerant science missions that are selected with the understanding that they can be responsive to requirements for flexibility.

The spacecraft will peer into the Moon's permanently shadowed regions to detect signs of ice in reflected light, and also pinpoint the locations of micro-cold traps less than a football field in size. Collecting measurements at multiple times of day over sunlit regions, the mission will help scientists understand whether the water signature on the illuminated surface changes as the lunar surface temperature changes by hundreds of degrees over the course of a lunar day, according to the agency.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, Lunar Trailblazer will help support the agency's Artemis program, which includes establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon by the end of the decade and preparing for crewed missions to Mars.

Lunar Trailblazer, a @NASA SIMPLEx mission led by @Caltech, is planned for launch in 2023 to map water on the Moon's surface and determine its abundance, location, form, and how it changes over time. One of Trailblazer's 2 instruments recently passed a milestone at JPL. pic.twitter.com/0SGY2RDlZR

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) July 8, 2022