All articles tagged with #moon orbiter
NASA has officially declared the Lunar Trailblazer moon orbiter dead after losing contact shortly after launch in February 2025. The mission aimed to map lunar water resources to support future Artemis missions, but the spacecraft's solar arrays likely failed to point correctly, leading to battery depletion. Despite efforts to reestablish contact, the mission was ended in July 2025, marking a setback in lunar exploration efforts.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) successfully bounced a laser off India's Vikram moon lander, marking a historic first in space communication. The laser light show took place on Dec. 12, 2023, with the orbiter transmitting laser pulses toward the lander and then registering the light that bounced back. This achievement paves the way for future missions to use retroreflectors, with several NASA retroreflectors set to fly aboard public and private moon landers in the near future.
South Korea's Danuri Moon orbiter captured a photo of India's Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission's landing site at the lunar south pole. The image was taken from a distance of about 100km and is part of Danuri's mission to photograph potential lunar landing sites. The South Korean science ministry plans to release more photos and lunar element maps in December. In other space news, Japan's X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) successfully powered on and entered the commission period, while JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) payload was displayed at a media event. JAXA is also monitoring its SLIM moon lander mission.