NASA still working to restore contact with Lunar Trailblazer

AUSTIN, Texas — NASA has yet to restore communications with a lunar science spacecraft launched last week, keeping the spacecraft from completing its mission as originally planned.

NASA said late March 4 that spacecraft controllers were continuing efforts to reestablish communications with the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. Those communications were lost less than 12 hours after its launch Feb. 26 as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 carrying the IM-2 lunar lander for Intuitive Machines.

The agency stated Feb. 27 that the spacecraft turned on its transmitter several hours after the loss of communications but did not have full telemetry from the spacecraft or the ability to command it. It did state there was evidence of “intermittent power system issues” with the spacecraft at the time it lost communications.

“Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar data collected March 2, the team believes the spacecraft is spinning slowly in a low-power state,” NASA stated.

The condition of the spacecraft prevented it from performing the trajectory correction maneuvers (TCMs) required for a flyby of the moon March 3. That flyby, and another in May, would have allowed Lunar Trailblazer to go into orbit around the moon in July. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin and operated by Caltech, would then go into a low polar orbit to carry out its science mission to study the quantities and form of water on the moon.

“The team is now working to define alternative TCM strategies that could be used after reacquiring communications and establishing normal spacecraft functionality,” the agency stated. “These alternative TCM strategies may be able to place Lunar Trailblazer in lunar orbit and allow it to complete some of its science objectives.”

NASA did not state how long it expected to try to reestablish commanding and control of the spacecraft before it became impossible or infeasible to recover the spacecraft and put it into a useful orbit.

“The Lunar Trailblazer team has been working around the clock to re-establish communications with the spacecraft,” Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a statement. “NASA sends up high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to do incredible science at a lower cost, and the team truly encapsulates the NASA innovative spirit — if anyone can bring Lunar Trailblazer back, it is them.”

The problem with Lunar Trailblazer is the latest setback for a NASA effort called Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEx, for low-cost planetary science missions. NASA selected Lunar Trailblazer for development in 2019 along with two other missions: Janus, a mission to send twin spacecraft to fly by binary asteroids; and Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE), which would send two spacecraft to Mars to study the interaction of the solar wind with the planet’s magnetic field.

ESCAPADE, though, was bumped in 2020 from its original rideshare launch on the Psyche mission, leading to a redesign led by Rocket Lab to keep the mission alive. When the Psyche launch was later delayed, Janus, also set to fly as a rideshare on that mission, found it could no longer reach its original asteroid targets or suitable alternatives. NASA decided in July 2023 to cancel the mission, putting the completed spacecraft into storage.

The two ESCAPADE spacecraft were completed last year and were set to launch on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn, but NASA demanifested the spacecraft from that launch in September when it was clear New Glenn would not launch before the mission’s window closed in mid-October. The mission is now looking at options to launch ESCAPADE on New Glenn in 2025 or 2026, allowing the spacecraft to reach Mars in September 2027.

NASA earlier selected two cubesat-class spacecraft as part of SIMPLEx. One, a mission to test particle aggregation called Q-PACE, failed to establish communications after launch into low Earth orbit on Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne in 2021.mThe other, LunaH-Map, was one of the cubesat secondary payloads on the inaugural launch of the Space Launch System in November 2022, on a mission to study water ice on the moon. A stuck valve in its propulsion system, likely caused by the cubedat being in storage before launch far longer than planned, kept it from going into orbit around the moon.

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