NASA's Lunar Flashlight Will Search Out Ice In Dark Moon Craters

NASA is gearing up to send astronauts to the moon as part of the Artemis program. One challenge that astronauts participating in that program will face his being able to get enough supplies for an extended mission, particularly water. Water is a very heavy, yet critical resource, that is difficult to send from the Earth.

Explorers may be able to seek out ice on the moon to melt and filter for drinking water and to produce rocket fuel. NASA has a spacecraft called the Lunar Flashlight that is a CubeSat roughly the size of a briefcase that will be used to search for naturally occurring surface ice at the bottom of craters on the moon. These craters have never seen sunlight.

The Lunar Flashlight spacecraft is a technology demonstrator that aims to achieve several technological firsts. It aims to be the first mission to look for water ice using lasers. It will also be the first spacecraft using a "green" propellant. That green propellant is a new kind of fuel that safer to transport and store than the more commonly used spacecraft propellant hydrazine.

The Lunar Flashlight will orbit the surface of the moon for two months and use a four-laser reflectometer using near-infrared wavelengths that are readily absorbed by water to identify any accumulations of ice on the surface. The lasers will reflect back to the spacecraft as they shine into permanently shadowed regions of the South Pole of the moon if they hit rock and signal the lack of ice. However, if the laser is absorbed, it would indicate that the ice pockets do exist.

NASA says that the satellite will only be able to provide information about the presence of ice on the surface, not below it. The Lunar Flashlight will be one of the 13 secondary payloads aboard the Artemis I mission. Robotic missions to the moon will begin in 2021 with humans returning in 2024.