Lunar Trailblazer

Mission Profile

Prime Contractors

Companies that built, launched, or operate this mission. Tickers link to their investor profile.

• LMTLockheed Martin
• Caltech / IPAC
• Johns Hopkins APL
• NASA JPL

Overview

Lunar Trailblazer was a low-cost, small-satellite NASA mission designed to make detailed maps of water and other volatiles on the lunar surface from orbit, complementing the surface measurements being made by CLPS landers and rovers. Selected through NASA's competitive SIMPLEx program with a $94M cost cap, the 200-kg spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin and Caltech and carried two science instruments: HVM3, a high-resolution near-infrared spectrometer to detect water ice and hydroxyl, and LTM, a thermal emission imager. Lunar Trailblazer launched on 26 February 2025 as a rideshare on the SpaceX Falcon 9 that delivered Intuitive Machines' IM-2 lander to lunar transfer orbit. Within hours of separation, however, the mission lost two-way communication with Earth and was unable to perform its planned trajectory correction maneuvers. After weeks of recovery attempts using NASA's Deep Space Network, the agency declared the mission lost in May 2025, attributing the failure to a probable spacecraft power anomaly. The loss highlighted the inherent risks of low-cost SmallSat science missions, which trade redundancy for affordability.

Key Milestones

1. 2019-06-28

   NASA selects Lunar Trailblazer through SIMPLEx

2. 2025-02-26

   Launch as rideshare on Falcon 9 with IM-2

3. 2025-02-27

   Two-way communications lost shortly after separation

4. 2025-05-08

   NASA declares Lunar Trailblazer mission lost

Related Missions

Sources

1. NASA — Lunar Trailblazer
2. Caltech — Lunar Trailblazer