That NASA/Caltech Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft deployed February 26 is officially a no-go for its intended mission of looking for water-ice on the Moon.
A new JPL report has stated that efforts to reestablish communications with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer have continued since mission operators lost contact with the small satellite one day after launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 as a rideshare payload.
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“The team continues to send commands to the spacecraft via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), while other radio ground stations are volunteering time to ‘listen’ for a signal from Lunar Trailblazer and track the spacecraft as it moves farther from Earth,” a NASA posting notes.
Science instruments onboard Lunar Trailblazer smallsat probe for lunar water.
Image credit: Jasper Miura, Lockheed Martin
Lunar Trailblazer’s orientation and rotation is being assessed while engineers also are using testbeds to study the spacecraft’s behavior during boot-up and recovery options from a low power state.
The downer of news: “While Lunar Trailblazer’s prime science mission is no longer possible, NASA is assessing whether there are mission options for the future,” explained a JPL release.
The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its science investigation is led by Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA.