Watch NASA’s water-hunting spacecraft's journey to the Moon in real time

NASA's Lunar Flashlight, a briefcase-sized satellite that will use near-infrared lasers and an onboard spectrometer to map ice in permanently shadowed regions near the Moon's south pole, is in a healthy state in space, the agency said.

The solar-powered small satellite or SmallSat, communicated with mission controllers following its launch on Sunday, December 11, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a rideshare with ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 1.

"The whole team is excited to see this small spacecraft do some big science in a few months' time," said John Baker, the Lunar Flashlight project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The tiny satellite will employ an energy-efficient near-rectilinear halo orbit that will take it within just 9 miles (15 kilometres) over the lunar South Pole and 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) away at its farthest point.

Prior to Lunar Flashlight, NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission, which launched earlier this year, employed this type of special orbit to get close to the Moon's surface.

Lunar Flashlight will showcase several technological firsts. According to NASA, this is the first time that multiple colored lasers will be used to seek out ice inside these dark regions on the Moon, which haven't seen sunlight in billions of years. It will also be the first planetary CubeSat mission to use "green" propulsion, a propellant that is less toxic and safer than hydrazine, a common propellant used by spacecraft.

The data collected by the Lunar Flashlight mission will be compared with observations made by other lunar missions to help reveal the distribution of surface water ice on the Moon for potential use by future astronauts.

You can view a 3D model of the satellite, including its journey to the Moon and when it reaches orbit to search for surface water ice at the lunar South Pole here.

To the Moon! 🚀Now that Lunar Flashlight has confirmed it is healthy in space, you can follow the small satellite's journey to the Moon in real time with @NASA's Eyes on the Solar System. https://t.co/UoSgdAgXLc pic.twitter.com/6fpHTc5KTe

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) December 11, 2022