NASA Tries to ‘Revive’ Lunar Trailblazer Orbiter
NASA is still hoping to recover the Lunar Trailblazer craft, which was launched on February 26 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The 200-kilogram probe went silent a day after launch. The mission team found that the craft was spinning slowly and running out of power because it was unable to collect enough sunlight to charge its batteries as planned.
Despite the major problems with Lunar Trailblazer, NASA continues to work on restoring contact with the device. They will try to contact the probe for another month and a half. Scientists have calculated that sunlight from May to mid-June should be enough to charge the batteries to a level that allows them to resume control of the probe.
If control can be regained, it will be able to return to an elliptical lunar orbit and complete the mission’s scientific objectives. If there is no signal by mid-June, NASA will begin the process of ending the mission, the agency said .
Lunar Trailblazer was launched to study where and in what form water is present on the Moon. The 200-kilogram probe, with solar panels spanning 3.5 meters, was planned to fly in a polar orbit at an altitude of about 100 kilometers above the Moon to create an unprecedentedly detailed map of its surface. The Lunar Trailblazer team hoped to find deposits of lunar ice on this map, which could be hidden, for example, in shadowed craters.
The probe was equipped with a high-resolution infrared spectrometer to study volatiles and minerals, as well as to map the spectral fingerprint or wavelength of reflected sunlight. The infrared multispectral thermal imager was designed to create a thermal map of the lunar landscape.
Lunar Trailblazer was launched alongside another craft that was also intended to assist NASA’s lunar projects , Athena. However, Athena’s fate was even more unfortunate: after landing near the moon’s south pole on March 6, it toppled over, bringing its 10-day mission to an early end.