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The Lockheed Martin-built Lunar Trailblazer satellite, measuring 11.5 feet wide and weighing 440 pounds, is set to launch in 2024 on a rideshare mission with the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission. Its objective is to hunt for water on the moon’s surface and create a map of its abundance and distribution.

The satellite is equipped with two instruments. The first, the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) sensor, built by the University of Oxford in England, will use infrared light to map the moon’s surface temperature and variations in its minerals. This data will help identify potential locations of water on the moon.

The second instrument, the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will measure the wavelengths of reflected sunlight to detect the chemical fingerprint of water on the lunar surface.

The mission aims to improve our understanding of water on the moon and its potential for supporting future crewed missions. The data collected will provide insight into water transport across the lunar surface and the possibility of capturing water in cold traps near the lunar poles.

The Lunar Trailblazer mission is part of a larger effort to search for water ice on the moon. Other missions include NASA’s LunaH-Map cubesat launched in November 2022, which detects water ice on the lunar surface, and NASA’s ShadowCam, which maps potential landing sites near the moon’s south pole for future crewed missions.

In addition to the United States, Russia’s Luna-25 mission and India’s Chandrayaan-3 are also expected to land on the moon to prospect for lunar water.

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