A NASA satellite, roughly the size of a dishwasher, launched from Florida on Wednesday to identify lunar locations where water exists, particularly in permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s poles.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, carrying NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter, developed by Lockheed Martin. The satellite was a secondary payload alongside the Nova-C lunar lander Athena, part of a mission led by American space company Intuitive Machines.
While the Moon is often considered arid, prior research suggests water exists even in sunlit areas. Scientists believe significant ice deposits could be present in permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles. Craters at the Moon’s South Pole remain in perpetual darkness and may harbor frozen water, while some water molecules could be trapped in the lunar regolith.
Lunar Trailblazer, weighing approximately 440 pounds (200 kg) and spanning 3.5 meters wide when its solar panels are deployed, is tasked with mapping and analyzing this water. Lunar resources could prove essential for future missions, supplying astronauts with drinking water, breathable oxygen, and even hydrogen fuel for rockets.
The satellite will execute multiple flybys and looping orbits before settling into a stable path around 100 km above the Moon’s surface. It will capture high-resolution imagery to determine the form, distribution, and abundance of lunar water while studying its potential role in the Moon’s water cycle.
“We see tiny amounts of water on sunlit portions of the Moon, which is mysterious,” said Bethany Ehlmann, planetary scientist and principal investigator of the mission. “The most interesting aspect for many is the potentially large amounts of ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. Lunar Trailblazer will peer inside to see how much is at the surface.”
Such locations could be crucial for future lunar exploration. “Understanding where a rover would drive or an astronaut would walk to examine deposits for science and future resource use will benefit all future landed missions,” Ehlmann added.
Lunar Trailblazer is equipped with two primary instruments: the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM), which will measure surface temperature, and the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), which will detect the spectral signature of water.
According to Tristram Warren, a planetary scientist from the University of Oxford, “We believe that the movement of water on the Moon is likely driven by surface temperature. By measuring the presence and amount of water with HVM3 and surface temperature with LTM, we can better understand this relationship.”
Lunar water may originate from various sources, including solar wind interactions with lunar minerals or cometary and meteoritic impacts over billions of years. NASA estimates that the Moon could contain hundreds of millions of tonnes of water.
“Lunar water is not only valuable for human exploration but also scientifically fascinating,” Warren said. “The Moon has been orbiting near Earth since its formation, so understanding the origin of lunar water may help us uncover the origins of water on Earth.”
Source: Swifteradio.com
