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.
