Cape Canaveral, FL – A university-led mission to study the presence of water on the moon is nearly ready for launch. The Lunar Trailblazer, designed to detect ice or liquid water trapped in lunar rocks, is set to take flight atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than February 26 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The orbiter will launch as a rideshare alongside the primary payload, the Athena lunar lander developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin
Built by Lockheed Martin, the 440-pound (200 kg) Lunar Trailblazer was assembled on the company’s Curio platform, a novel, scalable spacecraft architecture designed for cost-effective deep-space exploration. The spacecraft, equipped with two deployable solar arrays, will be managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary science professor at Caltech, serves as the mission's principal investigator.
“Lunar Trailblazer shares heritage with the GRAIL spacecraft, which explored lunar gravity,” said Bronson Collins, chief engineer of Lunar Trailblazer. GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), launched in 2011, used twin probes named "Ebb" and "Flow" to study the moon’s gravity field.
Lunar Trailblazer is part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will scan the moon’s permanently shadowed regions for micro-cold traps—areas smaller than a football field where water ice may reside. It will also observe sunlit regions throughout the lunar day, helping scientists determine if water signatures vary with temperature changes that can range by hundreds of degrees.
Equipped with two key instruments—the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) from JPL and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) from the University of Oxford—the spacecraft aims to revolutionize our understanding of lunar water cycles.
“All of the scientific exploration is carried out by these two instruments,” Collins explained. “They are mounted on the Curio platform, which includes a large spherical propellant tank essential for reaching lunar orbit.”
A Cost-Effective, High-Risk Mission
Lockheed Martin’s Ryan Pfeiffer, program manager for Lunar Trailblazer, emphasized the mission's low-cost, high-risk approach. By utilizing commercial off-the-shelf parts and single-string architecture, which lacks redundancy in critical systems, the mission aims to deliver impactful
science on a tight budget.
The science instruments on the Lunar Trailblazer will search for lunar water. Image credit: Jasper Miura, Lockheed Martin
“Our risk posture is greater to conserve budget,” Pfeiffer noted, acknowledging that this tradeoff enables more affordable access to space.
Whitley Poyser, director of deep space exploration at Lockheed Martin, highlighted the importance of understanding lunar water resources for future exploration. “Assessing the moon's water resources is crucial for sustained human presence,” she said, pointing to NASA’s Artemis program as a key driver in establishing a long-term lunar foothold.
Beyond lunar exploration, insights gained from the mission could inform future human expeditions to Mars. “Our experience on the moon will pave the way for effective living on Mars,” Poyser stated.
Preparing for Launch
Now stationed at Cape Canaveral, Lunar Trailblazer is undergoing final preparations, including power checks, battery charging, and propellant loading. After launch, it will take between four to seven months to reach lunar orbit, depending on the launch window. The mission is expected to last at least one year, culminating in a planned crash landing on the moon—an end-of-mission protocol known as “surface disposal.”
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