Before arriving at the Moon, the small satellite mission will use the gravity of the Sun, Earth, and Moon over several months to gradually line up for capture into lunar orbit.

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer arrived in Florida recently in advance of its launch later this month and has been integrated with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Shipped from Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, the small satellite is riding along on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 launch — part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative — which is slated for no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 26, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.

Approximately 48 minutes after launch, Lunar Trailblazer will separate from the rocket and begin its independent flight to the Moon. The small satellite will discover where the Moon’s water is, what form it is in, and how it changes over time, producing the best-yet maps of water on the lunar surface. Observations gathered during its two-year prime mission will contribute to the understanding of water cycles on airless bodies throughout the solar system while also supporting future human and robotic missions to the Moon by identifying where water is located.

Key to achieving these goals are the spacecraft’s two state-of-the-art science instruments: the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM³) infrared spectrometer and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) infrared multispectral imager. The HVM³ instrument was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and LTM was built by the University of Oxford and funded by the UK Space Agency.

“The small team is international in scope, which is more typical of larger projects,” said Andy Klesh, Lunar Trailblazer’s project systems engineer at JPL. “And unlike the norm for small missions that may only have a very focused, singular purpose, Lunar Trailblazer has two high-fidelity instruments onboard. We are really punching above our weight.”

Intricate Navigation

Before it can use these instruments to collect science data, Lunar Trailblazer will for several months perform a series of Moon flybys, thruster bursts, and looping orbits. These highly choreographed maneuvers will eventually position the spacecraft so it can map the surface in great detail.

Weighing only 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and measuring 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, Lunar Trailblazer is about the size of a dishwasher and has a relatively small engine. To make its four-to-seven-month trip to the Moon (depending on the launch date) as efficient as possible, the mission’s design and navigation team has planned a trajectory that will use the gravity of the Sun, Earth, and Moon to guide the spacecraft — a technique called low-energy transfer.

“The initial boost provided by the rocket will send the spacecraft past the Moon and into deep space, and its trajectory will then be naturally reshaped by gravity after several lunar flybys and loops around Earth. This will allow it to be captured into lunar orbit with minimal propulsion needs,” said Gregory Lantoine, Lunar Trailblazer’s mission design and navigation lead at JPL. “It’s the most fuel-efficient way to get to where we need to go.”

As it flies past the Moon several times, the spacecraft will use small thruster bursts — aka trajectory correction maneuvers — to slowly change its orbit from highly elliptical to circular, bringing the satellite down to an altitude of about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the Moon’s surface.

Arriving at the Moon

Once in its science orbit, Lunar Trailblazer will glide over the Moon’s surface, making 12 orbits a day and observing the surface at a variety of different times of day over the course of the mission. The satellite will also be perfectly placed to peer into the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s South Pole, which harbor cold traps that never see direct sunlight. If Lunar Trailblazer finds significant quantities of ice at the base of the craters, those locations could be pinpointed as a resource for future lunar explorers.

The data the mission collects will be transmitted to NASA’s Deep Space Network and delivered to Lunar Trailblazer’s new operations center at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California. Working alongside the mission’s experienced team will be students from Caltech and nearby Pasadena City College who are involved in all aspects of the mission, from operations and communications to developing software.

Lunar Trailblazer was a selection of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration), which provides opportunities for low-cost science spacecraft to ride-share with selected primary missions. To maintain the lower overall cost, SIMPLEx missions have a higher risk posture and lighter requirements for oversight and management. This higher risk acceptance allows NASA to test pioneering technologies, and the definition of success for these missions includes the lessons learned from more experimental endeavors.

“We are a small mission with groundbreaking science goals, so we will succeed by embracing the flexibility that’s built into our organization,” said Lee Bennett, Lunar Trailblazer operations lead with IPAC. “Our international team consists of seasoned engineers, science team members from several institutions, and local students who are being given the opportunity to work on a NASA mission for the first time.”

More About Lunar Trailblazer

Lunar Trailblazer is led by Principal Investigator Bethany Ehlmann of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Caltech also leads the mission’s science investigation and mission operations. This includes planning, scheduling, and sequencing of all science, instrument, and spacecraft activities during the nominal mission. Science data processing will be done in the Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization at Caltech. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages Lunar Trailblazer and provides system engineering, mission assurance, the HVM3 instrument, and mission design and navigation. Lockheed Martin Space provides the spacecraft, integrates the flight system, and supports operations under contract with Caltech. University of Oxford developed and provided the LTM instrument. Part of NASA’s Lunar Discovery Exploration Program, the mission is managed by NASA’s Planetary Mission Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Lunar Trailblazer, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/lunar-trailblazer

News Media Contacts

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov

Isabel Swafford
Caltech IPAC
626-216-4257
iswafford@ipac.caltech.edu

2025-021

Explore More

5 min read

NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Will Seek Life’s Ingredients

Article 7 hours ago

2 min read

Lunar Space Station Module Will Journey to US ahead of NASA’s Artemis IV Moon Mission

A key element of the Gateway lunar space station has entered the cleanroom for final…

Article 10 hours ago

3 min read

NASA’s Polar Ice Experiment Paves Way for Future Moon Missions 

Article 1 day ago

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

When NASA’s Artemis IV astronauts journey to the Moon, they will make the inaugural visit to Gateway, humanity’s first space station in lunar orbit. Shown here, technicians carefully guide HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost)—a foundational element of Gateway—onto a stand in the cleanroom at Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy. The element’s intricate structure, designed to support astronauts and science in lunar orbit, has entered the cleanroom after successfully completing a series of rigorous environmental stress tests.

In the cleanroom, technicians will make final installations before preparing the module for transport to the United States, a key milestone on its path to launch. This process includes installing and testing valves and hatches, performing leak checks, and integrating external secondary structures. Once these steps are finished, the module will be packaged for shipment to Gilbert, Arizona, where Northrop Grumman will complete its outfitting.

As one of Gateway’s four pressurized modules, HALO will provide Artemis astronauts with space to live, work, conduct scientific research, and prepare for missions to the lunar surface. The module will also support internal and external science payloads, including a space weather instrument suite attached via a Canadian Space Agency Small Orbital Replacement Unit Robotic Interface, host the Lunar Link communications system developed by European Space Agency, and offer docking ports for visiting vehicles, including lunar landers and NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Developed in collaboration with industry and international partners, Gateway is a cornerstone of NASA’s Artemis campaign to advance science and exploration on and around the Moon in preparation for the next giant leap: the first human missions to Mars.

Explore More

2 min read

Advanced Modeling Enhances Gateway’s Lunar Dust Defense

Ahead of more frequent and intense contact with dust during Artemis missions, NASA is developing…

Article 3 weeks ago

2 min read

Gateway Tops Off

Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element is now equipped with its xenon and liquid fuel tanks.

Article 3 months ago

2 min read

Gateway: Life in a Lunar Module

Article 4 months ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Humans In Space

Orion Spacecraft

Human Landing System

Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility

We’ve been talking about this for 2,000 years. Aristotle mentions it. And in our own time, scientists are designing experiments to figure out exactly what’s going on. But there’s no consensus yet.

Here’s what we do know.

The atmosphere isn’t magnifying the Moon. If anything, atmospheric refraction squashes it a little bit. And the Moon’s not closer to us at the horizon. It’s about 1.5 percent farther away. Also, it isn’t just the Moon. Constellations look huge on the horizon, too.

One popular idea is that this is a variation on the Ponzo illusion. Everything in our experience seems to shrink as it recedes toward the horizon — I mean clouds and planes and cars and ships. But the Moon doesn’t do that. So our minds make up a story to reconcile this inconsistency. Somehow the Moon gets bigger when it’s at the horizon. That’s one popular hypothesis, but there are others. And we’re still waiting for the experiment that will convince everyone that we understand this.

So why does the Moon look larger on the horizon? We don’t really know, but scientists are still trying to figure it out.

[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

Full Episode List

Full YouTube Playlist

Explore More

4 min read

NASA’s Mini Rover Team Is Packed for Lunar Journey

Article 19 hours ago

1 min read

Building Blocks for Enhanced Mission Execution

Article 20 hours ago

5 min read

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Colorful Clouds Drifting Over Mars

Article 21 hours ago

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

A trio of suitcase-size rovers and their base station have been carefully wrapped up and shipped off to join the lander that will deliver them to the Moon’s surface.

Three small NASA rovers that will explore the lunar surface as a team have been packed up and shipped from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, marking completion of the first leg of the robots’ journey to the Moon.

The rovers are part of a technology demonstration called CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration), which aims to show that a group of robots can collaborate to gather data without receiving direct commands from mission controllers on Earth. They’ll use their cameras and ground-penetrating radars to send back imagery of the lunar surface and subsurface while testing out the novel software that enables them to work together autonomously.

The CADRE rovers will launch to the Moon aboard IM-3, Intuitive Machines’ third lunar delivery, which has a mission window that extends into early 2026, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Once installed on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, they’ll head to the Reiner Gamma region on the western edge of the Moon’s near side, where the solar-powered, suitcase-size rovers will spend the daylight hours of a lunar day (the equivalent of about 14 days on Earth) carrying out experiments. The success of CADRE could pave the way for potential future missions with teams of autonomous robots supporting astronauts and spreading out to take simultaneous, distributed scientific measurements.

Construction of the CADRE hardware — along with a battery of rigorous tests to prove readiness for the journey through space — was completed in February 2024.

To get prepared for shipment to Intuitive Machines’ Houston facility, each rover was attached to its deployer system, which will lower it via tether from the lander onto the dusty lunar surface. Engineers flipped each rover-deployer pair over and attached it to an aluminum plate for safe transit. The rovers were then sealed in protective metal-frame enclosures that were fitted snuggly into metal shipping containers and loaded onto a truck. The hardware arrived safely on Sunday, Feb. 9.

“Our small team worked incredibly hard constructing these robots and putting them to the test, and we have been eagerly waiting for the moment where we finally see them on their way,” said Coleman Richdale, the team’s assembly, test, and launch operations lead at JPL. “We are all genuinely thrilled to be taking this next step in our journey to the Moon, and we can’t wait to see the lunar surface through CADRE’s eyes.”

The rovers, the base station, and a camera system that will monitor CADRE experiments on the Moon will be integrated with the lander — as will several other NASA payloads — in preparation for the launch of the IM-3 mission.

More About CADRE

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The technology demonstration was selected under the agency’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative, which was established to expedite the development of technologies for sustained presence on the lunar surface. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate manages the CLPS initiative. The agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, both supported the project. Motiv Space Systems designed and built key hardware elements at the company’s Pasadena facility. Clemson University in South Carolina contributed research in support of the project.

For more about CADRE, go to:

https://go.nasa.gov/cadre

News Media Contact

Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov

2025-018

Explore More

6 min read

How NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Will Make a Looping Voyage to the Moon

Article 2 hours ago

5 min read

NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Will Seek Life’s Ingredients

Article 7 hours ago

2 min read

Lunar Space Station Module Will Journey to US ahead of NASA’s Artemis IV Moon Mission

A key element of the Gateway lunar space station has entered the cleanroom for final…

Article 10 hours ago

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

The full moon rises over the Superdome and the city of New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday evening, January 13, 2025.

New Orleans is home to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility where several pieces of hardware for the SLS (Space Launch system) are being built. For more than half a century, NASA Michoud has been “America’s Rocket Factory,” the nation’s premiere site for manufacturing and assembly of large-scale space structures and systems.

See more photos from NASA Michoud.

Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker

This Feb. 5, 1971, photo gives an excellent view of the Apollo 14 lunar module on the Moon’s surface after landing. At left, we can see that the astronauts – Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell – deployed the U.S. flag before taking this photo of the lunar module.

Shepard and Mitchell touched down in the Fra Mauro highlands region and conducted two moonwalks lasting more than nine hours in total. They set up an experiment package and collected 93 pounds of rock and soil samples to return to waiting scientists on Earth. In the meantime, astronaut Stuart Roosa, who remained in orbit aboard the command module, conducted observations and photography of the lunar surface from orbit. After their 33-hour lunar surface stay, Shepard and Mitchell rejoined Roosa in orbit, and left lunar orbit for the three-day return trip to Earth.

Image credit: NASA

4 Min Read

NASA Space Tech’s Favorite Place to Travel in 2025: The Moon!

NASA Space Technology has big travel plans for 2025, starting with a trip to the near side of the Moon!

Among ten groundbreaking NASA science and technology demonstrations, two technologies are on a ride to survey lunar regolith – also known as “Moon dust” – to better understand surface interactions with incoming lander spacecraft and payloads conducting experiments on the surface. These dust demonstrations and the data they’re designed to collect will help support future lunar missions.  

Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched at 1:11 a.m. EST aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company is targeting a lunar landing on Sunday, March 2. 

NASA Space Technology on Blue Ghost Mission 1

NASA’s Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) will lift, transport, and remove particles using electric fields to repel and prevent hazardous lunar dust accumulation on surfaces. The agency’s Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) technology will use stereo imaging to capture the impact of rocket plumes on lunar regolith as the lander descends to the Moon’s surface, returning high-resolution images that will help in creating models to predict regolith erosion – an important task as bigger, heavier payloads are delivered to the Moon in close proximity to each other. 

The EDS and SCALPSS technologies will be delivered to the Moon on Firefly’s first Blue Ghost mission, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Its landing target is a 300-mile-wide basin located on the Moon’s near side, called Mare Crisium – a large, dark, basaltic plain that filled an ancient asteroid impact. First-of-their-kind experiments will deploy after landing to gather important data in a broad spectrum of areas including geophysical characteristics, global navigation, radiation tolerant computing, and the behavior of lunar regolith.

Replicating the Moon’s harsh environment on Earth is a significant challenge because of extreme temperatures, low gravity, radiation, and dusty surface. The CLPS initiative provides unprecedented access to the lunar surface, allowing us to demonstrate technologies in the exact conditions they were designed for. Missions like Blue Ghost Mission 1 are a true game changer for NASA technology advancement and demonstration.”

Michael Johansen

Flight Demonstrations Lead for NASA’s Game Changing Development program

Understanding regolith

The Moon’s dusty environment was one of the greatest challenges astronauts faced during Apollo Moon missions, posing hazards to lunar surface systems, space suits, habitats, and instrumentation. What was learned from those early missions – and from thousands of experiments conducted on Earth and in space since – is that successful surface missions require the ability to eliminate dust from all kinds of systems. Lunar landings, for example, cause lunar dust to disperse in all directions and collect on everything that lands there with it. This is one of the reasons such technologies are important to understand. The SCALPSS technology will study the dispersion of lunar dust, while EDS will demonstrate a solution to mitigate it. 

Getting this new data on lunar regolith with be pivotal for our understanding of the lunar surface. We’ve long known that lunar dust is a huge challenge. The Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative has enabled us to initiate lunar dust mitigation efforts across the agency, working with industry and international partners. The lunar science, exploration, and technology communities are eager to have new quantitative data, and to prove laboratory experiments and develop technology solutions.”

Kristen John

Technical Integration Lead for NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII)

Dust mitigation technology has come a long way, but we still have a lot to learn to develop surface systems and infrastructure for more complex missions. LSII is actively engaged in this effort, working with the lunar community across sectors to expand knowledge and design new approaches for future technologies. Working alongside the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium, LSII has a unique opportunity to take a holistic look at dust’s role in the development of surface infrastructure with other key capability areas including in-situ resource utilization, surface power, and surviving the lunar night.  

Learning from the the Moon benefits Mars science and exploration

Capabilities for minimizing dust interaction are as important for future missions on Mars as it is for missions on the Moon. Like the Moon, Mars is also covered with regolith, also called Martian dust or Martian soil, but the properties are different than lunar regolith, both in shape and mineralogy. The challenges Mars rovers have encountered with Martian regolith have provided great insight into the challenges we will face during lunar surface missions. Learning is interwoven and beneficial to future missions whether hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, on the Moon, or millions, on Mars.  

Learn more from a planetary scientist about how science factors into lunar dust mitigation technologies:

Explore More

4 min read

NASA Cameras to Capture Interaction Between Blue Ghost, Moon’s Surface

Article 1 month ago

4 min read

NASA Technology Helps Guard Against Lunar Dust

Article 10 months ago

3 min read

NASA Lander to Test Vacuum Cleaner on Moon for Sample Collection

Article 3 weeks ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Space Technology Mission Directorate

NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative

Game Changing Development Projects

Game Changing Development projects aim to advance space technologies, focusing on advancing capabilities for going to and living in space.

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)

The goal of the CLPS project is to enable rapid, frequent, and affordable access to the lunar surface by helping…

A suite of NASA scientific investigations and technology demonstrations is on its way to our nearest celestial neighbor aboard a commercial spacecraft, where they will provide insights into the Moon’s environment and test technologies to support future astronauts landing safely on the lunar surface under the agency’s Artemis campaign.

Carrying science and tech on Firefly Aerospace’s first CLPS or Commercial Lunar Payload Services flight for NASA, Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched at 1:11 a.m. EST aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company is targeting a lunar landing on Sunday, March 2.

“This mission embodies the bold spirit of NASA’s Artemis campaign – a campaign driven by scientific exploration and discovery,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “Each flight we’re part of is vital step in the larger blueprint to establish a responsible, sustained human presence at the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Each scientific instrument and technology demonstration brings us closer to realizing our vision. Congratulations to the NASA, Firefly, and SpaceX teams on this successful launch.” 

Once on the Moon, NASA will test and demonstrate lunar drilling technology, regolith (lunar rocks and soil) sample collection capabilities, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation methods. The data captured could also benefit humans on Earth by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact our home planet.  

“NASA leads the world in space exploration, and American companies are a critical part of bringing humanity back to the Moon,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We learned many lessons during the Apollo Era which informed the technological and science demonstrations aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 – ensuring the safety and health of our future science instruments, spacecraft, and, most importantly, our astronauts on the lunar surface. I am excited to see the incredible science and technological data Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 will deliver in the days to come.”

As part of NASA’s modern lunar exploration activities, CLPS deliveries to the Moon will help humanity better understand planetary processes and evolution, search for water and other resources, and support long-term, sustainable human exploration of the Moon in preparation for the first human mission to Mars. 

There are 10 NASA payloads flying on this flight:

• Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) will characterize heat flow from the interior of the Moon by measuring the thermal gradient and conductivity of the lunar subsurface. It will take several measurements to about a 10-foot final depth using pneumatic drilling technology with a custom heat flow needle instrument at its tip. Lead organization: Texas Tech University 
• Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) is designed to collect regolith samples from the lunar surface using a burst of compressed gas to drive the regolith into a sample chamber for collection and analysis by various instruments. Additional instrumentation will then transmit the results back to Earth. Lead organization: Honeybee Robotics  
• Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) serves as a target for lasers on Earth to precisely measure the distance between Earth and the Moon. The retroreflector that will fly on this mission could also collect data to understand various aspects of the lunar interior and address fundamental physics questions. Lead organization: University of Maryland
• Regolith Adherence Characterization (RAC) will determine how lunar regolith sticks to a range of materials exposed to the Moon’s environment throughout the lunar day. The RAC instrument will measure accumulation rates of lunar regolith on the surfaces of several materials including solar cells, optical systems, coatings, and sensors through imaging to determine their ability to repel or shed lunar dust. The data captured will allow the industry to test, improve, and protect spacecraft, spacesuits, and habitats from abrasive regolith. Lead organization: Aegis Aerospace 
• Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) will demonstrate a computer that can recover from faults caused by ionizing radiation. Several RadPC prototypes have been tested aboard the International Space Station and Earth-orbiting satellites, but now will demonstrate the computer’s ability to withstand space radiation as it passes through Earth’s radiation belts, while in transit to the Moon, and on the lunar surface. Lead organization: Montana State University 
• Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) is an active dust mitigation technology that uses electric fields to move and prevent hazardous lunar dust accumulation on surfaces. The EDS technology is designed to lift, transport, and remove particles from surfaces with no moving parts. Multiple tests will demonstrate the feasibility of the self-cleaning glasses and thermal radiator surfaces on the Moon. In the event the surfaces do not receive dust during landing, EDS has the capability to re-dust itself using the same technology. Lead organization: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center 
• Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) will capture a series of X-ray images to study the interaction of solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field that drives geomagnetic disturbances and storms. Deployed and operated on the lunar surface, this instrument will provide the first global images showing the edge of Earth’s magnetic field for critical insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces surrounding our planet impact it. Lead organizations: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University 
• Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will characterize the structure and composition of the Moon’s mantle by measuring electric and magnetic fields. This investigation will help determine the Moon’s temperature structure and thermal evolution to understand how the Moon has cooled and chemically differentiated since it formed. Lead organization: Southwest Research Institute
• Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) will demonstrate the possibility of acquiring and tracking signals from Global Navigation Satellite System constellations, specifically GPS and Galileo, during transit to the Moon, during lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface. If successful, LuGRE will be the first pathfinder for future lunar spacecraft to use existing Earth-based navigation constellations to autonomously and accurately estimate their position, velocity, and time. Lead organizations: NASA Goddard, Italian Space Agency
• Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) will use stereo imaging photogrammetry to capture the impact of rocket plume on lunar regolith as the lander descends on the Moon’s surface. The high-resolution stereo images will aid in creating models to predict lunar regolith erosion, which is an important task as bigger, heavier payloads are delivered to the Moon in close proximity to each other. This instrument also flew on Intuitive Machine’s first CLPS delivery. Lead organization: NASA’s Langley Research Center 

“With 10 NASA science and technology instruments launching to the Moon, this is the largest CLPS delivery to date, and we are proud of the teams that have gotten us to this point,” said Chris Culbert, program manager for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We will follow this latest CLPS delivery with more in 2025 and later years. American innovation and interest to the Moon continues to grow, and NASA has already awarded 11 CLPS deliveries and plans to continue to select two more flights per year.”

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander is targeted to land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side. The NASA science on this flight will gather valuable scientific data studying Earth’s nearest neighbor and helping pave the way for the first Artemis astronauts to explore the lunar surface later this decade.

Learn more about NASA’s CLPS initiative at:

https://www.nasa.gov/clps

-end-

Amber Jacobson / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
amber.c.jacobson@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov

Natalia Riusech / Nilufar Ramji
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
nataila.s.riusech@nasa.gov / nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov

Antonia Jaramillo
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-501-8425
antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov

As the Artemis campaign leads humanity to the Moon and eventually Mars, NASA is refining its state-of-the-art navigation and positioning technologies to guide a new era of lunar exploration.

A technology demonstration helping pave the way for these developments is the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) payload, a joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency to demonstrate the viability of using existing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals for positioning, navigation, and timing on the Moon.

During its voyage on an upcoming delivery to the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, LuGRE would demonstrate acquiring and tracking signals from both the U.S. GPS and European Union Galileo GNSS constellations during transit to the Moon, during lunar orbit, and finally for up to two weeks on the lunar surface itself.

The LuGRE payload is one of the first demonstrations of GNSS signal reception and navigation on and around the lunar surface, an important milestone for how lunar missions will access navigation and positioning technology. If successful, LuGRE would demonstrate that spacecraft can use signals from existing GNSS satellites at lunar distances, reducing their reliance on ground-based stations on the Earth for lunar navigation.

Today, GNSS constellations support essential services like navigation, banking, power grid synchronization, cellular networks, and telecommunications. Near-Earth space missions use these signals in flight to determine critical operational information like location, velocity, and time.

NASA and the Italian Space Agency want to expand the boundaries of GNSS use cases. In 2019, the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission broke the world record for farthest GPS signal acquisition 116,300 miles from the Earth’s surface — nearly half of the 238,900 miles between Earth and the Moon. Now, LuGRE could double that distance.

“GPS makes our lives safer and more viable here on Earth,” said Kevin Coggins, NASA deputy associate administrator and SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “As we seek to extend humanity beyond our home planet, LuGRE should confirm that this extraordinary technology can do the same for us on the Moon.”

Reliable space communication and navigation systems play a vital role in all NASA missions, providing crucial connections from space to Earth for crewed and uncrewed missions alike. Using a blend of government and commercial assets, NASA’s Near Space and Deep Space Networks support science, technology demonstrations, and human spaceflight missions across the solar system.

“This mission is more than a technological milestone,” said Joel Parker, policy lead for positioning, navigation, and timing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We want to enable more and better missions to the Moon for the benefit of everyone, and we want to do it together with our international partners.”

This mission is more than a technological milestone. We want to enable more and better missions to the Moon for the benefit of everyone…

JOEL PARKER

PNT Policy Lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The data-gathering LuGRE payload combines NASA-led systems engineering and mission management with receiver software and hardware developed by the Italian Space Agency and their industry partner Qascom — the first Italian-built hardware to operate on the lunar surface.

Any data LuGRE collects is intended to open the door for use of GNSS to all lunar missions, not just those by NASA or the Italian Space Agency. Approximately six months after LuGRE completes its operations, the agencies will release its mission data to broaden public and commercial access to lunar GNSS research.

“A project like LuGRE isn’t about NASA alone,” said NASA Goddard navigation and mission design engineer Lauren Konitzer. “It’s something we’re doing for the benefit of humanity. We’re working to prove that lunar GNSS can work, and we’re sharing our discoveries with the world.”

The LuGRE payload is one of 10 NASA-funded science experiments launching to the lunar surface on this delivery through NASA’s CLPS initiative. Through CLPS, NASA works with American companies to provide delivery and quantity contracts for commercial deliveries to further lunar exploration and the development of a sustainable lunar economy. As of 2024, the agency has 14 private partners on contract for current and future CLPS missions.

Demonstrations like LuGRE could lay the groundwork for GNSS-based navigation systems on the lunar surface. Bridging these existing systems with emerging lunar-specific navigation solutions has the potential to define how all spacecraft navigate lunar terrain in the Artemis era.

The payload is a collaborative effort between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Italian Space Agency. Funding and oversight for the LuGRE payload comes from the agency’s SCaN Program office. It was chosen by NASA as one of 10 funded research and technology demonstrations for delivery to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospace Inc, a flight under the agency’s CLPS initiative.

About the Author

Korine Powers

Senior Writer and Education Lead

Korine Powers, Ph.D. is a writer for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program office and covers emerging technologies, commercialization efforts, education and outreach, exploration activities, and more.

LMS instrument aboard the Blue Ghost Lander heading to Mare Crisium in mid-January

As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is developing a series of increasingly complex lunar deliveries and missions to ultimately build a sustained human presence at the Moon for decades to come. Through the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, commercial provider Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will head to the Moon’s Mare Crisium for a 14-day lunar lander mission, carrying NASA science and technology that will help understand the lunar subsurface in a previously unexplored location.

Developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA’s Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will probe the interior of the Moon to depths of up to 700 miles, two-thirds of the way to the lunar center. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone to understanding the evolution of solid worlds.

Magnetotellurics uses natural variations in surface electric and magnetic fields to calculate how easily electricity flows in subsurface materials, which can reveal their composition and structure.

“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of purposes, including to find oil, water, and geothermal and mineral resources, as well as to understand geologic processes such as the growth of continents,” said SwRI’s Dr. Robert Grimm, principal investigator of LMS. “The LMS instrument will be the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics.”

Mare Crisium is an ancient, 350-mile-diameter impact basin that subsequently filled with lava, creating a dark spot visible on the Moon from Earth. Early astronomers who dubbed dark spots on the moon “maria,” Latin for seas, mistook them for actual seas.

Mare Crisium stands apart from the large, connected areas of dark lava to the west where most of the Apollo missions landed. These vast, linked lava plains are now thought to be compositionally and structurally different from the rest of the Moon. From this separate vantage point, LMS may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of most of the Moon.

The LMS instrument ejects cables with electrodes at 90-degree angles to each other and distances up to 60 feet. The instrument measures voltages across opposite pairs of electrodes, much like the probes of a conventional voltmeter. The magnetometer is deployed via an extendable mast to reduce interference from the lander. The magnetotelluric method reveals a vertical profile of the electrical conductivity, providing insight into the temperature and composition of the penetrated materials in the lunar interior.

“The five individual subsystems of LMS, together with connecting cables, weigh about 14 pounds and consume about 11 Watts of power,” Grimm said. “While stowed, each electrode is surrounded by a ‘yarn ball’ of cable, so the assembly is roughly spherical and the size of a softball.”

The LMS payload was funded and will be delivered to the lunar surface through NASA’s CLPS initiative. Southwest Research Institute based in San Antonio built the central electronics and leads the science investigation. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided the LMS magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields, and Heliospace Corp. provided the electrodes used to measure the electrical fields.

Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander.

Media Contact: Rani Gran
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

A NASA X-ray imager is heading to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, where it will capture the first global images of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation.

The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager, or LEXI, instrument is one of 10 payloads aboard the next lunar delivery through NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, set to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than mid-January, with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander. The instrument will support NASA’s goal to understand how our home planet responds to space weather, the conditions in space driven by the Sun.

Once the dust clears from its lunar landing, LEXI will power on, warm up, and direct its focus back toward Earth. For six days, it will collect images of the X-rays emanating from the edges of our planet’s vast magnetosphere. This comprehensive view could illustrate how this protective boundary responds to space weather and other cosmic forces, as well as how it can open to allow streams of charged solar particles in, creating aurora and potentially damaging infrastructure. 

“We’re trying to get this big picture of Earth’s space environment,” said Brian Walsh, a space physicist at Boston University and LEXI’s principal investigator. “A lot of physics can be esoteric or difficult to follow without years of specific training, but this will be science that you can see.”

What LEXI will see is the low-energy X-rays that form when a stream of particles from the Sun, called the solar wind, slams into Earth’s magnetic field. This happens at the edge of the magnetosphere, called the magnetopause. Researchers have recently been able to detect these X-rays in a patchwork of observations from other satellites and instruments. From the vantage point of the Moon, however, the whole magnetopause will be in LEXI’s field of view.

The team back on Earth will be working around the clock to track how the magnetosphere expands, contracts, and changes shape in response to the strength of the solar wind.

“We expect to see the magnetosphere breathing out and breathing in, for the first time,” said Hyunju Connor, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the NASA lead for LEXI. “When the solar wind is very strong, the magnetosphere will shrink and push backward toward Earth, and then expand when the solar wind weakens.”

The LEXI instrument will also be poised to capture magnetic reconnection, which is when the magnetosphere’s field lines merge with those in the solar wind and release energetic particles that rain down on Earth’s poles. This could help researchers answer lingering questions about these events, including whether they happen at multiple sites simultaneously, whether they occur steadily or in bursts, and more.

These solar particles streaming into Earth’s atmosphere can cause brilliant auroras, but they can also damage satellites orbiting the planet or interfere with power grids on the ground.

“We want to understand how nature behaves,” Connor said, “and by understanding this we can help protect our infrastructure in space.”

The CLPS delivery won’t be LEXI’s first trip to space. A team at Goddard, including Walsh, built the instrument (then called STORM) to test technology to detect low-energy X-rays over a wide field of view. In 2012, STORM launched into space on a sounding rocket, collected X-ray images, and then fell back to Earth.

It ended up in a display case at Goddard, where it sat for a decade. When NASA put out a call for CLPS projects that could be done quickly and with a limited budget, Walsh thought of the instrument and the potential for what it could see from the lunar surface.

“We’d break the glass — not literally — but remove it, restore it, and refurbish it, and that would allow us to look back and get this global picture that we’ve never had before,” he said. Some old optics and other components were replaced, but the instrument was overall in good shape and is now ready to fly again. “There’s a lot of really rich science we can get from this.”

Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. NASA Goddard is a lead science collaborator on LEXI. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, including LEXI.

Learn more about CLPS and Artemis at:
https://www.nasa.gov/clps

By Kate Ramsayer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Explore More

2 min read

Approval to Exceed GSA Lodging for LPSC 2025

Article


2 hours ago

27 min read

Summary of the Third Annual AEOIP Workshop

Article


2 hours ago

2 min read

NASA Workshops Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement with Educators

Article


1 day ago

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System