NASA's micro-mission Lunar Trailblazer will scout the Moon this year


NASA's micro-mission Lunar Trailblazer will scout the Moon this year

Planetary geologists like me are interested in data from Lunar Trailblazer, one of these two scouting missions. The data from this mission will help us understand how water forms and behaves on rocky planets and moons.

PRIME-1, or the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment, will be mounted on a lunar lander. It's scheduled for launch in January 2025.

Aboard the lander are two instruments: the Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, TRIDENT, and the Mass Spectrometer for Observing Lunar Operations, MSOLO. TRIDENT will dig down up to 3 feet (1 meter) and extract samples of lunar soil, and MSOLO will evaluate the soil's chemical composition and water content.

Joining the lunar mining experiment is Lunar Trailblazer, a satellite launching on the same Falcon 9 rocket.

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