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NASA’s forthcoming Artemis II mission aims to return astronauts to the moon no earlier than April 2026. The last time astronauts were present on the moon was in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission.
Artemis II will utilize NASA’s Space Launch System, which is an exceedingly powerful rocket designed to support human exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. A crew of four will travel in an Orion spacecraft, previously launched around the moon and safely returned during the Artemis I mission.
However, prior to Artemis II, NASA plans to send two missions to survey the lunar south pole’s surface for resources that could sustain human space travel and support groundbreaking scientific research.
Planetary geologists like myself are keen on the data from Lunar Trailblazer, one of these two reconnaissance missions. The information garnered from this mission will enhance our understanding of how water forms and behaves on rocky planets and moons.
Initiating scientific exploration
PRIME-1, short for the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment, will be mounted on a lunar lander. Its launch is set for January 2025.
Onboard the lander are two instruments: The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, TRIDENT, and the Mass Spectrometer for Observing Lunar Operations, MSOLO. TRIDENT is designed to drill down to 3 feet (1 meter) to obtain lunar soil samples, while MSOLO will analyze the chemical makeup and hydration content of the soil.
Along with the lunar mining endeavor is Lunar Trailblazer, a satellite that will launch on the same Falcon 9 rocket.
Imagine this arrangement as a multimillion-dollar satellite rideshare, where multiple missions share a rocket to reduce fuel consumption when escaping Earth’s gravitational force.
Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist, serves as the principal investigator for Lunar Trailblazer and directs a team of scientists and students from Caltech. Trailblazer is classified as a NASA Small, Innovative Mission for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEx.
The intent of these missions is to deliver operational experience at reduced costs. Each SIMPLEx mission has a budget limit of $55 million—Trailblazer has exceeded that mark slightly at $80 million. Even so, this mission’s cost is about a quarter of a standard robotic mission from NASA’s Discovery Program. Discovery Program missions generally carry a price tag around $300 million, with a maximum allowance of $500 million.
Creating small yet powerful satellites
Years of research and development in small satellites, or SmallSats, have paved the way for Trailblazer’s development. SmallSats conduct highly specific measurements and complement insights obtained from other tools.
When multiple SmallSats operate together in a constellation, they can simultaneously capture various measurements, offering a high-resolution image of the terrestrial or lunar surface.
These SmallSats are employed for SIMPLEx missions. Their compact size and affordability enable researchers to explore inquiries associated with a greater technical risk. For instance, Lunar Trailblazer employs commercial off-the-shelf components to maintain low costs.
These economical, high-risk experimental missions may assist geologists in enhancing their understanding of the solar system’s origins, including its composition and how it has transformed. Lunar Trailblazer will specifically target mapping the moon.
A concise timeline of water discoveries on the Moon
For a long time, scientists have shown great interest in the surface of our nearest celestial companion, the Moon. As early as the mid-17th century, astronomers mistakenly identified ancient volcanic activity as lunar mare, a term stemming from the Latin word for “seas.”
Close to two centuries later, astronomer William Pickering’s calculations indicated that the Moon lacked an atmosphere. Consequently, he reasoned that the moon could not hold water on its surface, as any such water would evaporate.
Nevertheless, during the 1990s, NASA’s Clementine mission discovered water on the moon. Clementine marked the first mission to thoroughly chart the moon’s surface, including its polar regions. This dataidentified the existence of ice within perpetually shadowed regions on the moon at low resolution.
The initial discovery of water by scientists catalyzed further investigations. NASA initiated the Lunar Prospector mission in 1998 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. The India Space Research Organization launched its Chandrayaan-1 mission, equipped with the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, M3, instrument in 2008. Although M3 was not intended for detecting liquid water, it surprisingly located it in sunlit regions of the moon.
These missions collectively generated maps illustrating the distribution of hydrated minerals — minerals that contain water molecules in their composition — and ice water on the lunar surface, especially in the frigid, dark, permanently shadowed areas.
Innovative mission, innovative science
However, how do variations in sunlight and crater shadows affect the temperature and physical state of water on the moon?
Lunar Trailblazer will feature two instruments, the Lunar Thermal Mapper, LTM, and a refined version of the M3 instrument, the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper, HVM3.
The LTM instrument is set to map surface temperatures, while the HVM3 will analyze how lunar rocks absorb light. These readings will enable the differentiation between water in its liquid and ice states.
Working together, these instruments will yield thermal and chemical evaluations of hydrated lunar rocks. They will assess water presence during various times of the lunar day, which takes approximately 29.5 Earth days, aiming to determine how the chemical characteristics of water fluctuate based on the time of day and its lunar location.
The findings will inform scientists whether the water is in a solid or liquid phase.
Scientific importance and future direction
There are three primary hypotheses regarding the origins of lunar water. It could be water that has been retained within the moon since its inception, located in its mantle layer. Certain geological processes might have gradually permitted it to escape to the surface over time.
Alternatively, the water may have been delivered by asteroids and comets colliding with the moon’s surface. It might even have been produced through interactions with the solar wind, which is a flow of particles emitted by the sun.
Lunar Trailblazer could illuminate these theories and assist researchers in addressing several other significant scientific inquiries, including how water behaves on rocky celestial bodies like the moon and whether future astronauts could utilize it.
César León Jr. is a Ph.D. candidate in planetary geology at Washington University in St. Louis.
This article has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can read the original article.
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