A dishwasher-sized satellite was launched into space on Wednesday from Florida to hunt for water deposits on the moon's surface. Water is a very important commodity in future lunar missions because it has the potential to be used as a valuable resource in interplanetary exploration. The Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft mission weighing 440 pounds (200 kg) will chart the availability of water, particularly in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles where scientists are convinced that there lie vast water ice deposits.

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer orbiter took off on a

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The orbiter was a side mission on the rocket, the primary mission of which was an Intuitive Machines lunar lander mission. Lockheed Martin's space division constructed the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft, which will be devoted to surveying

water on the moon

's surface.
Although the surface of the moon is generally considered to be dry, there have been a few occurrences of water on sunlit surfaces in the past. The focus of this mission, however, is the cold, shadowed regions that are permanently at the poles of the moon, where scientists think there may be large reservoirs of water ice. These are ideal targets for potential water resources to enable future exploration of the moon.

According to the report, Lunar Trailblazer will execute a series of flybys and orbital flybys over the coming several months to acclimatize itself for intensive mapping. Later, the spacecraft will be in orbit around the moon between 60 and 100 miles (100 km) above the lunar surface and take high-definition images of regions of interest in an attempt to survey the distribution and amount of water to map lunar water cycles.
Planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann, the mission's principal investigator, explained that while water signs have been found in the sunlit areas, the focus is on the exploration of the potential gigantic ice reservoirs in the permanently shadowed lunar craters. The areas could provide valuable resources for future travelers to the moon.

Lunar Trailblazer will use two main instruments to gather the most critical information. The Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) will be able to detect the temperature of the surface of the moon, and the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) will be able to map the unique patterns of light from water on the surface. The instruments will work together to allow scientists to find out how temperature influences the movement and presence of water on the moon.
The water on the moon can come from various sources, including the solar wind—electrically charged particles from the sun that potentially interact with lunar minerals to create water. Meteorites or comets that crashed into the moon over billions of years and carried water are another source. The quantity of water on the moon is unknown but is calculated to be in the hundreds of millions of tons.

Aside from its potential usefulness for future human exploration of the moon, the scientific investigation of water on the moon is of significant potential importance as well.
The moon has been in orbit around the Earth for nearly all of the time that the Earth-Moon system has existed, and scientific examination of the formation of water on the moon may be able to provide insight into the formation of water on the Earth as well. Tristram Warren, a planetary scientist at the University of Oxford, said that knowing how the water on the moon arrived there could give straightforward answers to the history of water on Earth. Overall, the Lunar Trailblazer mission is but one of the major milestones toward the detection of the presence of water on the moon that will be useful toward further exploration of the moon and perhaps some of the larger questions regarding the origins of water in our solar system.
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