{"id":22921,"date":"2025-02-27T13:45:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T14:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22921"},"modified":"2025-02-27T15:28:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T15:28:06","slug":"nasas-lunar-trailblazer-hitches-ride-to-the-moon-to-map-water-for-astronauts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22921","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019S Lunar Trailblazer Hitches Ride to the Moon to Map Water for Astronauts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lunar Trailblazer, an orbiter that shared a launch on Wednesday with the commercial Athena lander, will help scientists understand where the moon\u2019s water is, and what form it takes.<\/p>\n

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The moon is not bone dry, scientists now know. But how many drops of water will thirsty astronauts find? No one knows for sure.<\/p>\n

A robotic NASA spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer, which launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is aiming to provide a detailed map from orbit of the abundance, distribution and form of water across the moon.<\/p>\n

Lunar Trailblazer tagged along for the ride to space on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Athena, a commercial lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines<\/a> of Houston, which will deploy a NASA instrument to drill in the moon and sniff for water vapors.<\/p>\n

Athena will study one spot on the moon. Lunar Trailblazer will provide a global picture of water on the moon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s another exciting thing for us as we get more science into space with one launch,\u201d Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA\u2019s science mission directorate, said during a news conference before the launch.<\/p>\n

Less than an hour after liftoff, Lunar Trailblazer and Athena went their separate ways. Athena is taking a direct path to the moon, with landing scheduled for March 6, while Lunar Trailblazer set off on a meandering but fuel-efficient journey that will take four months to reach its destination. After it enters orbit, the spacecraft will make observations for at least two years.<\/p>\n

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Lunar Trailblazer, an orbiter that shared a launch on Wednesday with the commercial Athena lander, will help scientists understand where the moon\u2019s water is, and what form it takes.The moon is not bone dry, scientists now know. But how many drops of water will thirsty astronauts find? No one knows for sure.A robotic NASA spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer, which launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is aiming to provide a detailed map from orbit of the abundance, distribution and form of water across the moon.Lunar Trailblazer tagged along for the ride to space on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Athena, a commercial lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, which will deploy a NASA instrument to drill in the moon and sniff for water vapors.Athena will study one spot on the moon. Lunar Trailblazer will provide a global picture of water on the moon.\u201cThat\u2019s another exciting thing for us as we get more science into space with one launch,\u201d Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA\u2019s science mission directorate, said during a news conference before the launch.Less than an hour after liftoff, Lunar Trailblazer and Athena went their separate ways. Athena is taking a direct path to the moon, with landing scheduled for March 6, while Lunar Trailblazer set off on a meandering but fuel-efficient journey that will take four months to reach its destination. After it enters orbit, the spacecraft will make observations for at least two years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22923,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22924,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22921\/revisions\/22924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}