Lunar Trailblazer adds to a list of recent NASA-led or NASA-aided small lunar spacecraft failures that includes LunaH-Map, Lunar Flashlight, Lunar IceCube, and LunIR.
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight cubesat launched in 2022 was powered by ASCENT.
The propulsion system for Lunar Flashlight was designed, integrated, and tested under extreme schedule pressure because the mission was originally planned to launch as a secondary payload on the Space Launch System for the Artemis 1 mission.
Lunar Flashlight was launched in December 2022.
Lunar Flashlight tested an upgraded radio called Iris.
NASA instead launched Lunar Flashlight as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 launch of the HAKUTO-R M1 lander operated by the Japanese company ispace, which lifted off less than a month after Artemis 1.
Lunar Flashlight was the first spacecraft beyond Earth orbit to use the Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic (ASCENT) green propellant developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The Lunar Flashlight propulsion system was developed from paper to product in 20 months during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Efforts to fix Lunar Flashlight’s propulsion problem, including using one fully functioning thruster to adjust its trajectory, were unsuccessful as of 2023-02-08.
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight cubesat launched 2022-12-09 as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 launch of a commercial lunar lander by Japanese company ispace.
NASA procured a rideshare launch opportunity and launched Lunar Flashlight on a Falcon 9 on 2022-12-11, along with the Hakuto-R lunar lander from the Japanese company ispace.
ASCENT was successfully demonstrated on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission launched in 2019, and Lunar Flashlight is the first mission to use ASCENT beyond Earth orbit.
Engineers are troubleshooting thruster problems on the Lunar Flashlight cubesat launched in December 2022 to search for water ice at the moon.
A change to a propulsion system provided by the Georgia Institute of Technology during Lunar Flashlight development caused the cubesat to miss its original secondary-payload launch opportunity on Artemis 1 because the propulsion system was not ready by fall 2021.
NASA procured a flight for Lunar Flashlight as a secondary payload on Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission and later moved it to the ispace launch when IM-1 slipped to March 2023.
SpaceX launched ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Lunar Flashlight to a lunar transfer orbit on 2022-12-11 at 2:38 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Lunar Flashlight uses a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice.
Lunar Flashlight is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on 2022-12-01.
Lunar Flashlight’s orbit will be a Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) that reaches 43,0 m (70,0 m) from the Moon at its most distant point.
NASA originally planned to fly 13 cubesats on Artemis 1, but three—Cislunar Explorers, CU-3E, and Lunar Flashlight—were not ready before the integration deadline last fall.