Tech developed in Colorado for new orbiter to advance research on life in space

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Tech developed in Colorado for new orbiter to advance research on life in space

Tech built in Colorado will soon be heading to the moon as Lockheed Martin is working with Cal-Tech and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send up an orbiter.

The mission hopes to send back data that can help bring people back to the moon and even explore other planets. The orbiter will map out water on the moon and see if it can support future space travel or even a long-term presence.

Lockheed Martin’s Colorado campus has a long history of working on big, groundbreaking tech sent up to space. But, as Director of Deep Space Exploration Whitley Poyser explained, this isn’t necessarily one of those missions.

“We’ve done these large flagship missions, and these new frontiers and Horizon class medium sized missions. But this is a fast, small mission, and we’re going to have a really big impact,” Poyser said.

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Lunar Trailblazer

CBS Colorado


The Lunar Trailblazer may be smaller than you’d expect, but that’s part of the point.

Poyser said the shorter timeline and smaller budget could be a step towards more frequent space research.

“If we don’t know what’s happening out in our solar system as times progressed; If we don’t know how we got to where we are it’s really hard for us to be prepared for where we might be going,” Poyser said.

In this case, the Lunar Trailblazer, and engineers like Trevor Merkley who helped build it, could be preparing us for life on the moon.

“The goal of the mission is to figure out what is the location and the composition of water and things that are water-like on the moon, and that’s to enable things for future actual human rated flights to the moon,” Lunar Trailblazer Lead Systems Engineer Merkley said.

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Lunar Trailblazer objective

CBS Colorado


After takeoff, it’ll take a few months for the trailblazer to get into orbit and begin its mission sending back data for the next year or so.

“We’ve got to get to the moon first. And so that is soon after launch, we’ve got to get in contact with the vehicle, make sure everything’s working as intended,” Merkley said, “From there, we begin our circularization campaign to get to our final science orbit, and that’s where we’ll actually be taking observations with the two instruments.”

Early next week, the Lunar Trailblazer will be shipped down to Florida, where it will hitch a ride with another lunar mission expected to take off for the moon later next month.

“It’s something that sometimes can be hard to believe, when you look up in the sky and you see the moon away out there, then thinking that you’re going to have something that you worked on is actually going to be all the way out there,” Merkley said.

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