News

26 February 2021

Wil Santiago
Trailblazer of the Week

“This mission is a major stepping stone in enabling not only a new way of doing space missions, but also enabling human exploration by mapping water resources on the Moon.”

12 February 2021

Joshua Wood
Trailblazer of the Week

The Spacecraft Manager reflects on the upside of failure and why he’s so excited to be a part of a new class of NASA mission: the SmallSat.

22 January 2021

Daniel R. Ellis
Trailblazer of the Week

“My biggest fulfillment of this job is to be a part of something that is bigger than myself.”

15 January 2021

Alicia Wayman
Trailblazer of the Week

“Nothing should stop you from what will make you happy the rest of your life.”

18 December 2020

Mike Skeen
Trailblazer of the Week

Mike Skeen has always been fascinated with flight. He now oversees the electrical systems that will power Lunar Trailblazer's spacecraft.

11 December 2020

Winnie Jeng
Trailblazer of the Week

The former GIS intern recounts creating a lunar database and how it propelled her toward a career in computer science.

2 December 2020

Lunar Trailblazer is Now a Confirmed Mission!

For more information, see the official press releases by NASA and Caltech.

25 November 2020

Sue Linch
Trailblazer of the Week

Working on a mission to the Moon is "a childhood dream realized" for Lockheed Martin engineering lead Sue Linch.

6 November 2020

Walton R. Williamson:
Trailblazer of the Week

The HVM³ instrument manager explains the challenges—and breakthroughs—of preparing Trailblazer’s imaging spectrometer.

31 October 2020

Happy Halloween from Lunar Trailblazer!

University of Oxford graduate student, Lunar Thermal Mapper collaborator, and now master pumpkin artist Rory Evans carves a Moon from a pumpkin featuring Lunar Trailblazer.

23 October 2020

Enhanced Communication Opportunity for NASA at the Moon

Lunar Trailblazer also presented the details of an Enhanced Communication Opportunity on Tuesday at its PDR to NASA stakeholders...[more]

21 October 2020

Lunar Trailblazer passes Preliminary Design Review!

On October 19-21, Lunar Trailblazer presented its design to the SIMPLEx standing review board. On Wednesday, we heard the good news from the chair...[more]

9 October 2020

Marcos Perez:
Trailblazer of the Week

How the GIS intern went from chasing the Moon to mapping its surface.

2 October 2020

Lunar Trailblazer Completes Final Table Top Review in Advance of Preliminary Design Review

Congratulations to Lockheed Martin and the Trailblazer Team for completion of the Flight System Table Top Review with board report received today. This was Trailblazer’s fifth and final “table top review” prior to the Preliminary Design Review, which occurs the week of October 19th.

28 August 2020

Hongyu Cui:
Trailblazer of the Week

Hongyu Cui reflects on her science visualizations and the serendipity of her Trailblazer internship.

21 August 2020

Liberty Locsin:
Trailblazer of the Week

“I wanted to become a person I wish I met as a little girl: someone who tells people about science and that it is happening right in your backyard.”

19 August 2020

New Interactive Timeline of Lunar Water Research Unveiled on Lunar Trailblazer Website

The webpage, conceptualized and created by Pasadena City College intern Liberty Locsin, documents major milestones in the history of exploration for water on the Moon.

18 August 2020

Lockheed Martin Selected as New Flight System Partner for Lunar Trailblazer

The Denver-Based Organization Will Design and Build the Spacecraft, Integrate the Instruments, And Work with Rideshare Services to Ready Lunar Trailblazer as a Secondary Payload for Launch.

14 August 2020

Robert O. Green:
Trailblazer of the Week

Trailblazer’s instrument scientist is determined to make an imaging spectrometer that will advance the detection and characterization of lunar water.

10 August 2020

Lunar Trailblazer PI Bethany Ehlmann Gives Public Talk through Keck Institute for Space Studies

The public lecture, attended by 590 people from 16 countries, presented the Lunar Trailblazer mission, selected by NASA as one of its first planetary science small satellite missions.

1 August 2020

Jasper Miura:
Trailblazer of the Week

The Science Research Assistant shares his views on the versatility of his role.

30 July 2020

Trailblazer Intern Hongyu Cui Explains Her Artistic Process to Visualize Ice in the Moon’s Shadows

The Pasadena City College Interaction Design student describes the challenges involved in translating a scientific concept into a realistic graphic composition to visualize water ice in the Moon’s polar craters.

24 July 2020

Alan Didion:
Trailblazer of the Week

How the average day for Assistant Project Systems Engineer Alan Didion is anything but ordinary.

19 July 2020

Carrie Nugent talks with Principal Investigator Bethany Ehlmann on Spacepod

The podcast episode breaks down the mysteries of lunar water and geology – and how Lunar Trailblazer will help answer our most pressing questions.

17 July 2020

Jay Dickson:
Trailblazer of the Week

Trailblazer’s geomorphologist Jay Dickson reflects on rendering raw pixels into planetary panoramas.

11 July 2020

Two Lunar Trailblazer Presentations at the SSERVI NASA Exploration Science Forum

Principal Investigator Bethany Ehlmann and Co-Investigator Kerri Donaldson Hanna explained how Lunar Trailblazer will help develop our understanding of lunar water and composition. Both the abstracts and presentations are available at the NESF 2020 website.

10 July 2020

Martha House:
Trailblazer of the Week

Martha House shares her motivations for launching Pasadena City College’s student internship program with the Trailblazer mission.

26 June 2020

Christopher S. Edwards:
Trailblazer of the Week

A little curiosity led Christopher Edwards to a career in planetary science. Now he’s mapping temperature on the Moon, and he’s more curious than ever.

19 June 2020

Rachel Klima:
Trailblazer of the Week

The Deputy PI uses her expertise on lunar water to lead Trailblazer’s effort in finding it!

15 June 2020

Congratulations to the Trailblazer Team for Successful Completion of Intense Period of Reviews

Hard work by the Trailblazer team in early June resulted in successful LTM, HVM³, and MOS/GDS/SDS systems SIMPLEx “Table Top Reviews” and a successful MDNav internal peer review. The flight system Table Top is still to come.

8 June 2020

Bill Frazier:
Trailblazer of the Week

How Bill Frazier went from Trekkie to Trailblazer.

22 May 2020

Kerri Donaldson Hanna:
Trailblazer of the Week

Lunar Trailblazer’s Kerri Donaldson Hanna discusses her path from Midwest farm to the lunar surface.

12 May 2020

David Thompson:
Trailblazer of the Week

Lunar Trailblazer’s HVM³ Instrument Scientist explains what makes imaging spectroscopy a data scientist’s playground.

6 March 2020

New Animation Explains How Lunar Trailblazer Will Identify Lunar Water

The animation was developed by Pasadena City College intern Emily Felder and explains why Lunar Trailblazer needs both an infrared imaging spectrometer and a thermal imager.

26 February 2020

Lunar Trailblazer Caltech Team and Contractors to Resume Work

Spacecraft work resumes at Ball Aerospace and Trailblazer’s subsystem subcontractors. A signed contract between NASA Marshall and Caltech enables continuation of funded work at Caltech, Ball Aerospace, APL, Northern Arizona University, University of Central Florida, and Brown University.

7 February 2020

Lunar Trailblazer Presented at First Lunar Exploration Analysis Group Virtual Workshop

The fourteen minute presentation by principal investigator Bethany Ehlmann can be viewed and downloaded from our Gallery.

16 January 2020

Lunar Trailblazer Mission in Odd Contract Limbo

As of January 16, Lunar Trailblazer has exhausted funds received from NASA. Spacecraft provider Ball Aerospace halts work due to lack of funds while the Trailblazer Team awaits the December 2019 contract from NASA with new funds for its development.

15 January 2020

Trailblazer Team Completes Successful Requirements Review

Three independent reviewers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Program management from NASA HQ and NASA Marshall provided feedback on the mission requirements designed to guide how Lunar Trailblazer will accomplish its high-level objectives.

10 January 2020

New Trailblazer Illustration Depicts Water Ice in the Moon's Permanently Shadowed Regions

The graphic, created by Pasadena City College intern Hongyu Cui, shows what water ice might look like in the Moon’s polar craters.

11 December 2019

Multiple Lunar Trailblazer Presentations at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting

Presentations by PI Bethany Ehlmann, DPI Rachel Klima, Co-I Kerri Donaldson Hanna, and graduate student Christian Tai Udovicic introduced Lunar Trailblazer at the world’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists.

6 December 2019

Lunar Trailblazer to Rideshare with NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP)

NASA sent a memo to the team, stating Lunar Trailblazer is one of 4 to 5 secondary payloads on Heliophysic’s IMAP launch. The launch opportunity simplifies Lunar Trailblazer’s journey to the Moon by launching into L1 orbit instead of an arbitrary geostationary transfer orbit.

7 October 2019

Lunar Trailblazer Debuts New Mission Patch

The patch, which comes in seven different colors, features symbology representing how water is detected on the Moon’s surface by Lunar Trailblazer.

20 June 2019

PI Bethany Ehlmann Tweets About Lunar Trailblazer’s Mission Goals

The Caltech planetary science professor and JPL research scientist breaks down the mission’s objectives.