The Lunar Trailblazer mission to the moon officially ended on July 31, but it wasn’t a complete journey. NASA announced today that its teams lost contact with the satellite shortly after its launch several months earlier.
NASA‘s satellite was part of Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, which launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on February 26 at 19:16 EST. The Lunar Trailblazer successfully separated from the rocket as planned about 48 minutes after launch. Operators in Pasadena, California, established contact with the satellite at 20:13 EST, but two-way communication was lost the next day and the team was unable to reestablish it. According to the limited data received by ground teams before the satellite’s disappearance, the spacecraft’s solar panels were not properly positioned in relation to the sun, which led to a battery drain.
“Although this is not the outcome we had hoped for, the experience of missions like Lunar Trailblazer helps us learn and reduce risks for future low-cost small satellites that will engage in innovative scientific research as we prepare for a long-term human presence on the Moon,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication to this mission and for seeing it through to the end.”
The Lunar Trailblazer mission was one of several commercial space flights planned to travel to the Moon during 2025. Its goal was to create high-resolution maps of any water on the lunar surface, as well as to estimate how much water was present, in what forms, and how it might have changed over time. Let’s cross our fingers that the rest of the missions will be more successful.
