NASA’s Lunar Flashlight Has Launched – Follow the JPL Mission in Real Time

NASA’s Lunar Flashlight has communicated with mission controllers and confirmed it is healthy after launching Sunday, Dec. 11, at 2:38 a.m. EST (Saturday, Dec. 10, at 11:38 p.m. PST) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. About 53 minutes after launch, the small satellite, or SmallSat, was released from its dispenser to begin a four-month journey to the Moon to seek out surface water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar South Pole.

“It was a beautiful launch,” said John Baker, the Lunar Flashlight project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The whole team is excited to see this small spacecraft do some big science in a few months’ time.”

While Lunar Flashlight will never return to Earth, the world hasn’t missed its last chance to see the briefcase-size spacecraft. Rendered in crisp detail, a 3D digital version of the solar-powered SmallSat has made its debut in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, the agency’s recently revamped visualization tool.

“As soon as the Lunar Flashlight mission reached space, Eyes began tracking it, just as it will throughout the SmallSat’s entire science mission,” said Jason Craig, visualization producer at JPL. “The system uses real trajectory data from the mission, so as Lunar Flashlight’s journey unfolds, you can see exactly where the SmallSat is.”

The spacecraft’s avatar is an exact model of the real thing, down to its four solar arrays, science instrument, and thrusters. With the drag of a finger or mouse, users can change their perspective of the SmallSat and see where it is in space, whether on its long trek to lunar orbit or when it’s zooming above the lunar surface, collecting science data.

To get close to the Moon’s surface, the SmallSat will employ what’s called a near-rectilinear halo orbit – designed for energy efficiency – that will take it within just 9 miles (15 kilometers) over the lunar South Pole and 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) away at its farthest point. Only one other spacecraft has employed this type of orbit: NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission, which launched earlier this year and can also be viewed in NASA Eyes, including as it makes its closest passes over the lunar North Pole.

Lunar Ice Science

Lunar Flashlight will use a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. This is the first time that multiple colored lasers will be used to seek out ice inside these dark regions on the Moon, which haven’t seen sunlight in billions of years. Should the lasers hit bare rock or regolith (broken rock and dust), the light will reflect back to the spacecraft. But if the target absorbs the light, that would indicate the presence of water ice. The greater the absorption, the more ice there may be.