Lunar Trailblazer: Multimedia

Lunar Trailblazer will detect signatures of water ice in reflected light, and it will pinpoint the locations of micro-cold traps less than a football field in size.

Lunar Trailblazer approaches the Moon as it enters its science orbit. The small satellite will orbit about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface, producing maps of water on the Moon.

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Lunar Trailblazer in lunar orbit about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the surface of the Moon.

Lunar Trailblazer sits on its rotation fixture after being fueled and prior to being installed to the EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) ring at SpaceX's Payload Processing Facility in NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

Members of NASA's Lunar Trailblazer team pose with the spacecraft at SpaceX's Payload Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in early February 2025.

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft sits in a clean room in August 2024 after undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft gets covered in anti-static wrap before being shipped from Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, to Florida, where it arrived on Jan. 29, 2025.

The High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM³) sits in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in early December 2022.

Seen here before being shipped from the U.K. to the U.S., the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) is one of two instruments that will be carried by NASA's Lunar Trailblazer.