Lunar Flashlight

Illuminate permanently-shadowed regions and detect water ice absorption bands in the near-infrared.

Illuminate permanently-shadowed regions and detect water ice absorption bands in the near-infrared. Lasers in 4 different bands illuminate the lunar surface with a 3 degree beam (1Km). Light reflected off the lunar surface enters the spectrometer to distinguish water ices from regolith.

Lunar Flashlight underwent a major architecture change in mid-2015:

• The solar sail was unable to provide a stable orbit around the moon due to the perturbations caused by Earth.
• Lunar Flashlight traded designs and architecture for two new elements.
• Active illumination source,
• High ΔV propulsion system,
• Reflectometer instrument and regolith water measurements are unchanged,

The Cubesat aimed to test a new "green" propellant during its four-month journey to lunar orbit, but, after battling thruster glitches, it will not make lunar orbit after all, NASA officials said in an update on Wednesday (Feb. 8). The Lunar Flashlight team will instead redirect the cubesat to do monthly lunar flybys, if possible, starting with one in June. If that works out, Lunar Flashlight will still deliver valuable science, as it will swing by the south pole of the moon.

NASA has ended the mission of a cubesat intended to go into orbit around the moon but which was unable to do so because of problems with its propulsion system. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced May 12 the end of the Lunar Flashlight mission, five months after its launch. The spacecraft was unable to go into its planned polar orbit around the moon because its propulsion system could not produce the required thrust. Engineers spent several months trying to troubleshoot the problem, identified shortly after its December 2022 launch. They suspected that debris of some kind was blocking propellant lines, reducing the amount of propellant reaching the thrusters.

JPL said that Lunar Flashlight will make a flyby of Earth May 17 at an altitude of 65,000 kilometers and then head into deep space. Since other systems on the spacecraft continue to operate despite the propulsion problem, “NASA is weighing options for the future of the spacecraft.”

• ADCS - Blue Canyon XACT
• TRANSCEIVER - JPL Iris Deep Space Transponder
• OBC - Sphinx C&DH (LEON 3 FT)
• THRUSTER - Bradford ECAPS
• SOLAR PANELS - Blue Canyon
• SOLAR PANELS - MMA Design Trifold Solar Panels