Lunar Flashlight’s innovative hardware worked . other than its engines. Let’s call it a draw
NASA has given up searching for ice hidden inside craters on the surface of the Moon’s South Pole – for now – after the Lunar Flashlight cubesat carrying out the mission failed to generate enough thrust to reach its intended orbit.
Launched in December, the briefcase-sized spacecraft was designed to enter a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon, and use a laser to scan the dark nooks and crannies of the natural satellite’s surface for ice. The probe quickly ran into problems when its four thrusters, which use a type of propulsion system that had not previously flown beyond Earth’s orbit, malfunctioned.
“It’s disappointing for the science team, and for the whole Lunar Flashlight team, that we won’t be able to use our laser reflectometer to make measurements at the Moon,” Barbara Cohen, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement.
