NASA launches Lunar Flashlight; follow the mission in real time

NASA’s Lunar Flashlight has communicated with mission controllers and confirmed it’s wholesome after launching Sunday, Dec. 11, at 2:38 a.m. EST (Saturday, Dec. 10, at 11:38 p.m. PST) from Cape Canaveral House Drive Station in Florida. About 53 minutes after launch, the small satellite, or SmallSat, was launched from its dispenser to start a four-month journey to the moon to hunt out floor water ice in completely shadowed craters on the lunar South Pole.

“It was a stupendous launch,” stated John Baker, the Lunar Flashlight undertaking supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The entire staff is happy to see this small spacecraft do some huge science in just a few months’ time.”

Whereas Lunar Flashlight won’t ever return to Earth, the world hasn’t missed its final probability to see the briefcase-size spacecraft. Rendered in crisp element, a 3D digital model of the solar-powered SmallSat has made its debut in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, the company’s just lately revamped visualization software.

“As quickly because the Lunar Flashlight mission reached space, Eyes started monitoring it, simply as it should all through the SmallSat’s total science mission,” stated Jason Craig, visualization producer at JPL. “The system makes use of actual trajectory information from the mission, in order Lunar Flashlight’s journey unfolds, you may see precisely the place the SmallSat is.”

The spacecraft’s avatar is an actual mannequin of the true factor, all the way down to its 4 solar arrays, science instrument, and thrusters. With the drag of a finger or mouse, customers can change their perspective of the SmallSat and see the place it’s in space, whether or not on its lengthy trek to lunar orbit or when it is zooming above the lunar floor, accumulating science information.

To get near the moon‘s floor, the SmallSat will make use of what’s known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit—designed for vitality effectivity—that may take it inside simply 9 miles (15 kilometers) over the lunar South Pole and 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) away at its farthest level. Just one different spacecraft has employed this sort of orbit: NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Expertise Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission, which launched earlier this yr and will also be viewed in NASA Eyes, together with because it makes its closest passes over the lunar North Pole.

Lunar ice science

Lunar Flashlight will use a reflectometer geared up with 4 lasers that emit near-infrared gentle in wavelengths readily absorbed by floor water ice. That is the primary time that a number of coloured lasers can be used to hunt out ice inside these darkish areas on the moon, which have not seen daylight in billions of years. Ought to the lasers hit naked rock or regolith (damaged rock and dust), the sunshine will replicate again to the spacecraft. But when the goal absorbs the sunshine, that may point out the presence of water ice. The larger the absorption, the extra ice there could also be.

The science information collected by the mission can be in contrast with observations made by different lunar missions to assist reveal the distribution of surface water ice on the moon for potential use by future astronauts.

Lunar Flashlight will use a brand new type of “inexperienced” propellant that’s safer to move and retailer than the generally used in-space propellants akin to hydrazine. In reality, the SmallSat would be the first interplanetary spacecraft to make use of this propellant, and one of many mission’s major objectives is to exhibit this know-how for future use. The propellant was efficiently examined on a earlier NASA technology demonstration mission in Earth orbit.