An artist's concept of Lunar Trailblazer, a NASA mission to map water deposits on the Moon.
On a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, a small satellite developed in the metro Denver area will have a seat on board.
Its mission? Understanding the mysterious ways water forms on the moon.
The Lunar Trailblazer is prepped to study the water cycle and collect several datasets that map the water on the lunar surface, the quantities of water and figure out how it correlates with the moon's geology.
Lockheed Martin, the global defense and space contractor, began developing the spacecraft in 2020. The project is run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is led by California research university Caltech.
The spacecraft was built in Littleton at Lockheed Martin' Waterton Canyon campus.
The company has more than 10,000 employees in Colorado, as well as office locations in Denver, Aurora, Highlands Ranch and Colorado Springs. The Littleton campus is the site of many notable space projects like Artemis' Orion spacecraft, which is set to hold astronauts bracing to be the first humans back to the moon in decades.
The Lunar Trailblazer is scheduled to launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, with a four-day launch window.
The satellite will separate from the rest of the rocket within an hour after launch and use its own propulsion system to get to the moon within four months.
Once it arrives, the satellite is set to orbit the moon for two years.
The small satellite can detect ice from reflected light in some of the moon's darkest regions. It will collect measurements throughout the day in sunlit areas and compare how surface water differs over the course of a lunar day and when temperatures drop by a hundred degrees.
"While it is known that water exists on the lunar surface, little is known about its form, abundance or distribution," Lockheed Martin said. "The water may be locked inside rock and regolith -- broken rock and dust -- or it may collect as surface water ice inside the Moon's permanently shadowed craters."
Volcanic action on dark side of moon? 2 Denver space companies to look into it
The mission is part of NASA's long-term program Artemis, the nation's plan to return humans to the moon, to detect potential landing sites and learn more about how water developed on the moon.
"In cold shadows, water molecules may also settle for short periods as frost: When the Sun moves across the sky during the lunar day, the shadows move, cycling these water molecules into the Moon's exosphere and moving them to other cold places where they can settle once more as frost," Lockheed Martin said.
Part of NASA's quest is to set the foundation of establishing a moon economy, where many companies in Colorado are working on scientific and robotic advances to make it happen, so humans can one day live and work on the moon for research or commercial purposes.
Featured Local Savings
Colorado's aerospace industry is among the top hubs of the Artemis Moon to Mars project. NASA contracted more than 90 companies in Colorado to work on Artemis, according to a 2022 NASA report.
The next phase of missions -- following in the footsteps of the famous Apollo missions that brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon -- is expected to bring 14,600 jobs to Colorado, the second-highest economic boost in the nation, and $3 billion in economic output, the report said.
Water will be a critical resource for future human expeditions.
Not only could it be used for hydration or oxygen production, but it's also a source to potentially make hydrogen fuel on the moon.
The Lunar Trailblazer will create high-resolution maps of the lunar surface, the water on it and how the quantity of water changes over time. It can sense the difference between ice, absorbed water and water trapped in minerals, Bethany Ehlmann, Lunar Trailblazer principal investigator of Caltech, said at a prelaunch press conference Tuesday.
"These will be the highest resolution data sets of these parameters collected to date for select regions of the moon that are of high interest for science and future exploration," Ehlmann said.
Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin thinking small -- small satellites, that is
Understanding of how water got on the moon is still in its "infancy" stages, according to Pasadena-based Caltech.
Some theories include internal mantle water that was brought up through geologic processes, water brought in from asteroids and comets or creation on the surface through solar wind plasma.
The Lunar Trailblazer is small, weighing 450 pounds, according to NASA.
It will hitch a ride on the Falcon 9 rocket with another mission, the Commercial Lunar Payload System from Intuitive Machines set to collect volatility data from the Moon's South Pole.
It was a "natural fit" for the Lunar Trailblazer to join the other moon mission, said Joel Kearns, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration.
The satellite will orbit the moon as the other spacecraft will head down to the surface.
Combing aerial and ground level data, Ehlmann said the mission will help scientists get a better picture of what's on the moon's surface ahead of future human expeditions.
"Collectively, our dataset is going to answer fundamental questions about water on the moon and provide maps for the next generation of landed lunar robotic and astronaut missions," Ehlmann said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE GAZETTE