NASA has called it quits on attempts to contact its Lunar Trailblazer probe, notching up a failure in its low-cost, high-risk science program.
The probe, designed to map lunar water, launched on February 26, hitching a ride with the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander. All went well at first. The spacecraft separated from the rocket approximately 48 minutes after launch and established communications.
However, by the next day, contact was lost. It appeared the solar arrays were not properly oriented toward the Sun, and the probe’s batteries had been depleted. The spacecraft was tracked from Earth, and observations indicated it was in a slow spin as it drifted off into deep space.
Andrew Klesh, Lunar Trailblazer’s project systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said: “As Lunar Trailblazer drifted far beyond the Moon, our models showed that the solar panels might receive more sunlight, perhaps charging the spacecraft’s batteries to a point it could turn on its radio.”
NASA gave the stricken probe a few extra weeks in July to respond, but as the month drew to a close, so too did NASA’s efforts to recover the spacecraft. Even if there had been sufficient power to turn on the radio, the signal would have been too weak for controllers to receive telemetry and issue commands.
The mission aimed to produce high-resolution maps of water on the Moon’s surface and determine what form the water is in, how much is there, and how it changes over time. The data would have proved useful in future robotic and human missions to the lunar surface.
The Lunar Trailblazer was selected by NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) competition. SIMPLEx is about lowering costs by adopting a higher risk posture and less stringent requirements for oversight and management.
Readers would be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. At the end of the last century, NASA adopted a “faster, better, cheaper” approach to missions as it faced substantial budget cuts. The strategy, which was to increase mission cadence and lower costs by accepting greater risks, resulted in some successes, notably the Mars Sojourner rover – but also losses, such as the Mars Polar Lander.
As NASA faces further budget cuts, robotic missions with lower costs and a greater acceptance of risk are set to become more commonplace. ®