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It looks like there’s not much time left to save NASA’s LunaH-Map cubes.
The small probe was one of 10 launched as rover payloads last November on Artemis 1, the first-ever mission for NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
LunaH-Map aims to determine the abundance and distribution of water ice near the lunar south pole. But the spacecraft failed to perform a critical engine burn five days after liftoff and did not enter lunar orbit as planned.
Members of the expedition team quickly trace the problem to a stuck valve in the cubes’ propulsion system. They have been trying to troubleshoot it ever since but those efforts may end soon.
“If we can’t ignite [propulsion] LunaH-Map principal investigator Craig Hardgrove, of Arizona State University, said Monday (May 1) at the Interplanetary Small Satellite Conference, According to SpaceNews (Opens in a new tab).
Related: The 10 greatest photos from NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission
The Artemis 1 cubes will be integrated into the stage converter on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) in fall 2021, as noted by SpaceNews. But the mission did not begin until the following November, thanks to technical problems and bad weather.
Hardgrove said this delay may be the ultimate cause of the problem with LunaH-Map.
“We have informed NASA that this propulsion system was not built to withstand a long launch delay of more than four or five months,” he said on Monday.
LunaH-Map wasn’t the only Artemis 1 cube to have a rocky road after liftoff. For example, the Japanese spacecraft OMOTENASHI had a communications problem that prevented it from dropping a small lander on the moon. And the NEA Scout, which aims to solar sail on its way to a near-Earth asteroid and then study the space rock up close, has yet to call home after the Nov. 16 launch.
But Hardgrove said the mission teams for all of the Artemis 1 cubes should hold their heads high.
“It’s not fair to call any of them failures,” he said, according to Space News. “They’ve all developed a great deal of technology.”
Artemis 1 was generally successful, sending an unmanned Orion capsule into lunar orbit and back. NASA is now preparing for Artemis 2, which will launch four astronauts around the Moon in late 2024, if all goes according to plan. Artemis 3, which will place boots near the moon’s south pole, is due to follow a year or so later.
Mike Wall is the author of “outside (Opens in a new tab)Book (Major Grand Publishing, 2018; illustration by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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