Hitching A Ride To The Moon

welcome back to tomorrow space news today we've got another lunar Adventure that's hot off the Launchpad on February 26th 2025 SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket sending intuitive machine second lunar lander im2 Athena on its way to the moon but this Mission isn't alone there's three hitchhiker spacecraft that are also along for the ride and we're going to learn about all of them so let's dive in the star of the show is of course the Athena Lander by intuitive machines we did a good rundown last week about the payloads on board including a mini lunar lander Grace Hopper and three mini Rovers which will work together to collect lunar science and communicate with each other using a Nokia 4G network check out our summary video to learn more about these vehicles and the science that they hope to accomplish what I'd like to highlight today is the other spacecraft that were launched on this ride share Mission aside from the Athena Lander the other members of this car poool are NASA's lunar Trailblazer spacecraft which will hunt for lunar ice Astro forge's Odin spacecraft which will attempt to fly by A near Earth asteroid and finally we have a space tug called chimra which is built by epic Aerospace accompany from Argentina which is taking the long but scenic route to eventually deploy Cube SATs into geostationary orbit let's focus on NASA's lunar Trailblazer first lunar Trailblazer was selected in 2019 and initially was going to be built by ball Aerospace but instead lock Martin took over construction of the spacecraft lunar Trail Blazer's core mission is to create a detailed global map of water on the moon specifically water ice as well as hydrated minerals and hydroxy compounds down to a resolution that's finer than any previous Mission before it it's not just about finding ice it's about understanding its form its abundance and its Suess ability why because water is the ultimate lunar game Cher it can be split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel or breathable air and even for industrial processes but wait a minute didn't we already discover and map lunar ice well kind of NASA's lunar reconnaissance Orbiter or lro for short and other missions have mapped lunar ice but their efforts left gaps that Trailblazer aims to fill lro confirmed that ice does exist especially in the South Po's craters with estimates of 5 to 10% ice in some spots but its resolution is kilometers wide and uses indirect methods like reflectivity not direct water detection which means that it's more of a broad sketch than a detailed blueprint so yes we do have a general map but not a GPS level guide ice could be patchy with within craters 10% here none there and we don't know the microscale distribution of that ice so lunar Trailblazer is equipped with two key instruments a shortwave infrared spectrometer that detects the water spectral signatures that scales as small as 100 m per pixel across the entire lunar surface and it also has a thermal imager that measures surface temperatures at 50 m per pixel sniffing out ice in per L shadowed regions by how cold they stay this instrument combo lets Trailblazers see water in ways that other spacecraft couldn't pinpointing its exact locations concentrations and its physical state is it ice or is it bound inside of minerals and it can do that day and night across all latitudes of the Moon that being said it's going to be a little while before we get that detailed map lunar Trailblazer is going to take approximately 4 months to reach lunar orbit arriving around late June in 2025 hang on a minute I thought Athena was going to get to the moon in 7 days well for Trailblazer it's using a low energy flyby transfer to loop around a couple of times before it enters lunar orbit in an effort to preserve fuel so that Trailblazer can complete its Mission and control itself long enough to get a full map of the Moon the total Mission including the cruise phase and the science phases is planned for about 2 years in total so by the end of 2027 we should have all of that data it's hoping to find and have a much better plan on where we want to start building a moon base that has the easiest and the most access to water on the moon this is all really exciting stuff but let's move on because we have some more hitchhikers to talk about astrof Forge is a new company that aims to mine Asteroids for rare earth metals they are being very Scrappy and trying to launch lowcost missions to verify if some near Earth asteroids around us would be good targets for mining their spacecraft Odin is heading beyond the moon to scout asteroid 2022 ob5 what a name it's a small potentially metalr near Earth asteroid and their goal is to fly by that asteroid snap some high resolution black and white photos from about a kilometer away or about a half a mile and beam back that data on its density and its composition to prep for a future Landing mission called vest even if that particular asteroid turns out to be a rubble dust pile with no value this is the first time that any of the asteroid mining companies are actually sending a spacecraft to do a flyby Mission like this so it's going to verify a lot in terms of the engineering and experience needed to conduct lowcost asteroid hunting missions like this Odin is going to slingshot around the moon and then take about 300 days to reach that Target asteroid aiming for a flyby around January of 2026 when the asteroid is closest to Earth at around 400,000 Mi or 650,000 km away just far enough but close enough for a decent uh transfer of data here's a couple of quick facts about Odin that I'm super impressed by the spacecraft was developed in just 10 months they only started building it last year and the first parts that they initially had subcontracted out failed several tests so they had to start over from scratch and quickly build a replacement and that replacement thankfully passed all of the pre-launch testing this may be the fastest spacecraft development in history and they claimed it was only an estimated cost of $6.5 million which is a steal compared to most spacecraft although it is just a scout if they SU Ed we're going to see many more missions like this and more advanced Landers and eventually miners that being said as the recording of this video they are having some Communications problems the deep space network is currently being used for the Athena Lander and for lunar Trailblazer so astrof Forge is working with commercial satellite trackers to communicate with the spacecraft instead so far they've only gotten a few pings and not a full acquisition of signal meaning that they can't command the spacecraft to maneuver yet and if they don't get in touch soon the mission could be over before it starts the spacecraft is healthy though and is generating power with its own solar panels but even in the worst case scenario I'm still super impressed that they had developed the spacecraft so quickly and no doubt are going to learn a bunch of lessons regardless of what the outcome is finally let's talk about the last hitchhiker on this Mission Cima Geo which is built by the Argentinian company epic Aerospace this is a space tug that's meant to deliver smaller spacecraft or instruments to higher orbits than whatever rocket initially launched them into space cimera Geo has a payload deployer by exol launch and based on the size of that box it has one to four Cube sets inside that are going to be deployed in geostationary orbit the cube SATs identity and final orbital slot remain disclosed but the goal is clear get it to geostationary orbit and release it as a matter of fact many details about this Chimera Mission haven't been released it is on the same trajectory as all the rest of the spacecraft headed towards the moon right now and it is going to fall back towards Earth after a lunar flyby as will the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket but from there the spacecraft should be able to use its engine to aim for a geostationary orbit and circularize after a few orbits or maybe even all at once in one really long burn I'm honestly unsure at this point so it could be as short as a couple of weeks or as long as a couple of months before this Chimera space tug reaches its intended orbit and releases its mystery Cube sets and the One update that we have gotten so far is that epic Aerospace is in contact with their cimera GEOS spacecraft so they should be able to issue all the different commands so that they can do the different orbital Burns to accomplish its Mission these are all ambitious projects and I think that everyone is excited and hopeful for at least the lunar Landers to be successful if Athena lands successfully around March 6th of 2025 it's going to be a great accomplishment but don't forget about Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander which is in lunar orbit right now and returned a beautiful video about 60 Mi or 100 kmet from the lunar surface Blue Ghost is going to be attempting its Landing this Sunday on March 2nd starting around 12:20 a.m. Pacific Standard time or 3:20 a.m. eastern standard time and Firefly will be doing a joint live stream with NASA so we should have a lot to talk about this Sunday during our own weekly live stream at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard time or 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time we should know by then whether or not Firefly landed successfully all of us at tomorrow are wishing the the best of luck to Firefly intuitive machines as well as NASA astrof Forge and epic Aerospace for their missions this is certainly a very exciting time to be alive and witness history being made this is just the beginning and based on how all these Missions play out are either going to make or break support for the Artemis program and who knows maybe if Artemis is cancelled these types of missions will still continue with the Ambitions of the Artemis Accord signers the European space agency and the Japanese space agency won't give up the moon so easily even if the United States does however I'm pretty confident that American lawmakers will want to continue the lunar program especially if these lowcost missions succeed and give us better data about where we should be landing and building a lunar base in any case thank you very much for watching this video be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell so that you're notified whenever we up load another space news update until next time keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and don't forget add Astra to the Stars