NASA’s Moon-observing CubeSat Ready for Artemis Launch
By Katherine Schauer and Danny Baird
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA’s water-scouting CubeSat is now poised to hitch a ride to lunar orbit. Not much bigger than a shoe box, Lunar IceCube’s data will have an outsized impact on lunar science.
The satellite is integrated into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and ready to journey to the Moon as part of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, launching this year.
Orbiting the Moon, Lunar IceCube will use a spectrometer to investigate lunar ice. Earlier missions revealed water ice on the Moon, but Lunar IceCube will further NASA’s knowledge about lunar ice dynamics.
Scientists are interested in the absorption and release of water from the regolith — the Moon’s rocky and dusty surface. With Lunar IceCube investigating this process, NASA can map these changes as they occur on the Moon.
Lunar IceCube will also study the exosphere — the very thin atmosphere-like volume surrounding the Moon. By understanding the dynamics of water and other substances on the Moon, scientists will be able to predict seasonal changes for lunar ice that could impact its use as a resource in the future.
This will all be achieved from an efficient and cost-effective CubeSat that only weighs 31 pounds. Lunar IceCube is one of several CubeSats catching a ride to the Moon aboard Artemis I. These small satellites, along with future Artemis missions, will increase our knowledge for living and working on the Moon and eventually Mars.
Lunar IceCube is funded by NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships program, or NextSTEP, in support of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. The Lunar IceCube mission is led by Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia; and Busek Space Propulsion and Systems in Natick, Massachusetts.
85 responses to “NASA’s Moon-observing CubeSat Ready for Artemis Launch”
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The ice on the Moon is the key to the future of Human Space Flight. Evidence of lunar ice in 2008 should have launched a second space age and instead we got the billionaire idiot of the century dictating policy with his hobby rocket. Pathetic, disgusting, sad…….not enough words.
2022 and we are finally going back with the SLS.
These small satellites, along with future Artemis missions, will increase our knowledge for living and working on the Moon and eventually Mars.
We are not going to Mars with humans….an absolute dead end. Why do they keep throwing that at the public? Let me guess.
…During a carefully staged appearance at Kennedy Space Center yesterday, President Barack Obama rolled out his plans for the U. S. space program. Although there weren’t many surprises, one startling part of the speech was that we are abandoning the Moon as a goal…
the goal is not relevant
“or like they say in Golf, if you aim at nothing you will always hit it” Yogi Berra
“The goal is not relevant”
If you’re designing a launch vehicle and spacecraft and want to do it well, having an intended use case for them is important to informing design decisions. Lack of consistant purpose is why NASA is now planning lunar missions with a spacecraft that can’t get in and out of low lunar orbit, and has to use a halo orbit instead.
Yes, but the SLS was so highly recommended…
And what a recommendation it was… “If we can’t do a rocket for $11.5 billion, we ought to close up shop” – Bill Nelson
So with SLS cost at around $23 billion they only missed it by $12 billion or so…
Que the conspiracy theory claiming that is when Obama secretly put Elon Musk in charge of NASA…
Or that Musk’s tiny campaign contribution, at a time when his company was much smaller and less successful than Boeing et al., was influential enough to sway the government to do his bidding.
Riiight, Elon has no influence on anything…..he is like a white shiny pure as snow infant baby rocket jesus.
No fan of SLS, but hopefully this one works. And hopefully they built spares, just in case
The Shuttle legacy technology means that it is almost certain to succeed. And in the event of an anomaly it has the best escape system ever built to carry a crew to safety.
We are going. We just need to go more often. Once we fly around the Moon with people a couple times and shut down the ISS it is highly likely launch cadence will accelerate. And as every spacex fanboy knows, the more you launch the lower the cost.
I hope you understand that this 30-pound cubesat is not crewed.
It’s probably cheaper to build a thousand copies of this satellite than the overhead cost of triggering the escape system on SLS.
I hope you understand that triggering the escape system on the SLS is cheaper than killing astronauts.
Those cubesats are looking for data on ice. The ice is what is going to allow humans to permanently inhabit cislunar space. Jim Bridenstine knew it was the key to any future Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit. And he is likely why SLS is going. I wish he was still in charge. He was the only one in that whole administration that was worth a damn.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
Whatever you are babbling…..have a good day.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
There’s also no escape system for the capsule, since it’s flying without a crew. It will have a tower and capsule fairing with jettison motor for the same aerodynamics, but no escape motor.
a lot of money has been spent reducing risk. its likely to work
Spending a lot of money on space projects has a weak correlation with success
Spending a lot of money on space projects has a weak correlation with success
Yeah, just look at Apollo and the Moon landing.
More babbling and B.S. from the spacex fans.
webb?
Or Hubble. But given that all four of the engines have flown before the biggest risk will probably be from the software for SLS.
Or the integration of all the various subsystems. Mixture of legacy and new stuff in an unflown configuration.
Similar to my complexity concerns with Starship/Superheavy.
Yes, but if SLS fails it will years before the next flight while Starship/SuperHeavy will cycle to the next attempt in weeks…
Precisely the point that some are missing. My concerns may be valid on the first flight, or even possibly the third. Almost impossible for them to be valid by #10. SLS on the other hand…
Launch cadence is a big deal.
It’s an enormous deal. If you drove a car or flew a plane only every couple of years, retraining and repairs/maintenance would eat you alive.
And if you think a Moon rocket is anything like a car or a plane your brain has been eaten by an Ayn-Rand-in-space libertarian cult.
Yes, and even if it is successful the production of SLS is so slow there will only be lunar landings every other year at a mission cost of around $4 billion or so based on current estimates…
The good news is that if SpaceX hits it’s goals a charter Starship/SuperHeavy should be able to deliver a fair number of reporters to the sites to watch the NASA astronauts land in the official NASA HLS vehicle and do their EVA so there will be good video of the flights, like having a cruise ship full of reporters watching Christopher Columbus make landfall on his voyages.?
Perhaps Maezawa and Isaacman will be on hand with a group to welcome them.
Given what the money was spent on in this case, the probability of success is high.
Itll work.. Cores 2 & 3 are in the pipe.
They are in the pipe, but they aren’t spare. They’re spoken for on the assumption Artamis I will be a success.
It will be. Just noting that there are more in production.
Yes, but how about the new engines to replace the used Shuttle engines…
Build more? You know people at NASA are smart and stuff, right?
Yea, but remember it has been nearly 20 years since the last of the old Shuttle engines were manufactured. That means starting an entirely new production line with mostly new workers to build them once SLS runs through the last of the 16 surplus Shuttle Main Engines. That is not a trivial feat if you knew anything about manufacturing hi-tech hardware.
I don’t know anything about manufacturing anything, but I reckon AJR and NASA have a bunch of managers watching over world-class eggheads that do.
They have half a decade to do the job.
I saw spacex donned the wife beaters and dragged that battered water tower out to fire an engine for half a second.
I thought “milestone payment” but then stopped thinking that because that’s obnoxious and I’m trying to be a good person.
The bright flash can come at any moment and I have some strikes. Every little bit helps at this point.
“They have half a decade to do the job”
And SLS, designed and managed by the same eggheads was supposed to fly by 2017.
Difficult project. I commend them for getting through the continuity problems, fixing the technical issues, bringing the stack to launch.
They’re awesome!
As you pointed out, Nelson himself said that if they couldn’t do it for some $12 billion they should shut the project down. How far beyond we’ll be when Block II flies, if it ever does.
I’m always amused by the idea that companies who haven’t designed new hardware for decades are somehow more likely to succeed than those who’ve done so within the past few years.
SpaceX just announced it is going to do the orbital test flight of Starship on August 31. With the launch of the SLS scheduled for August 29 it looks like we have a good old fashion space race. Get the popcorn going! ?
Race between first flight attempts. The new contender vs. the ‘modernized’
antiqueclassic collection.As ever it should be noted that the second through…….. attempts will not be a race.
Aside from my reservations about the Starship, it should be operational in revenue service well before SLS tries for a second flight.
Now that there is a launch date for SH/Starship it will be interesting to see if the radical environmentalists strike. I wonder if the scene from “Destination Moon” where the environmentalists tried to stop the private industrialist from launching his rocket will occur for real.?
There will be no regulatory obstacles or unfavorable judgement.
It’s going to fail on its own merits.
True perhaps for BN7, but it will be followed by BN 8, BN9, BN…
Remember, Elon thrives of failed tests.?
It makes my skin crawl when you guys act like you’re on a first name basis with that guy.
The first woman and first person of color are in for one he’ll of a disappointment.
That’s because Elon Musk is a true space advocate and not merely a government contractor. It is not simply a job but his passion as you easily see in his interviews. He wants humans to be a multi-world species and will not give up on making it happen no matter what the radical environmentalists and legacy space firms throw at him.
When SpaceX launched the first satellites for the Starlink Constellation in May 2019 folks laughed at Elon Musk’s goal of launching 2,640 satellites in 60 months, (44 satellites a month) yet he just launched his 3,000 satellite last night only 39 months into the campaign, a rate 77 satellites a month and the launch rate is increasing with almost 300 launched last month alone.
FCC doesn’t share your optimism. Spacex was badgering them for a billion, got turned down.
FCC said the download speed is getting slower over time and the upload speed sucks. They also said the dish is too expensive.
Good thing he has the dod business antagonizing Russia. Everyone working to advance humanity always stops to poke Russia with a stick.
Universal sign you’re in it for humanity: talk trash to Russia.
‘Badgering.’ Interesting choice of words, given that the FCC specifically was courting interest from service providers. One might think you’re grinding an axe instead of accurately describing something.
Download speeds went up on average, not down, as shown here.
You claimed above that your skin crawls when people refer to Musk by his first name. My skin crawls at your capacity to accept the murder of innocent civilians because Russian propaganda told you it was okay.
I’m not listening to propaganda. I just like Russians.
One of the more interesting friendships I ever had was a Russian guy at a place I worked ten years after cold war. He’d been in the Russian army while I was in the ‘murican one. We had been proximal to one another during a reforger (big war games that used to happen in Germany).
When I saw Musk sucking up to that pissant midget I thought, oh of course. Of course he does that, an audience of millions of conned unfortunates listening to his dumb ass.
Your comments demonstrate otherwise. I like some Russians too, but I don’t have to then think it’s a great idea for Russia to invade Ukraine and murder non-combatants.
Sucking up to whom?
You shouldn’t throw the word murder around like that. It leaves an image of somebody all red, yelling with slobber spraying around.
You want to try to invoke the image of a guy having discussion in the lobby of a casino, wearing a dinner jacket with a small pistol concealed beneath, drinking a martini, looking around for the woman trained in martial arts that just won a beauty contest.
Anyway, um, sucking up to the people handling the cross dressing midget that’s trying to get money and everyone killed. Them.
What would you call the massacre of civilians? Afternoon tea? If you’re feeling uncomfortable, perhaps you should reconsider your enthusiasm for Russia wantonly invading Ukraine. This isn’t James Bond.
I still have no idea who you’re talking about.
The only thing uncomfortable is reading stuff written by somebody that uses words like genocide.
The midget should have taken his money and left for another country the moment it went military.
I always knew the boomers would end the US. I didn’t imagine them taking out the whe world. Shocking.
It’s not that big of a word.
Who is this midget you keep talking about?
Lol. Been imbibing Russian propaganda again?
I’m obviously talking about zelenskyy. The moron shelling a nuclear power plant.
You should have told the Russians to stop when they shelled it; you’re such a fan, surely they’d have listened to you.
The Russians occupy the plant; they’re not attacking themselves. It’s the midget.
How do you think they got control of the plant in the first place? They had to attack it.
Yes, but the news is reporting Russians blowing things up there now. But they’re not.
So the to people are being disingenuous about what’s going on.
The midget is being aided by people here. Favorable news, cash, weapons, pressure on europeans…
Maybe the Russians aren’t genocidal lunatics?
Or, perhaps they are, because it’s wartime and mistakes often happen, especially with a military as poorly-trained as Russia’s.
It doesn’t matter if the Russian people aren’t genocidal lunatics so long as their leader is a lunatic. It’s entirely within his power to end this war and put Russia on a positive course – yet you desire that people surrender to a bully. Why?
Because he doesn’t want the government in that neighboring country building up arms against them, the same way we didn’t want such activity in Cuba.
Also, he doesn’t want their culture undermined. Our people were using the midget to do that, right there in their doorstep. It included up to murder of ethnic Russians.
They stated all this clearly again and again. I only noticed because the geriatric patient we have was saying: evil, genocide, etc. That’s all he said. If they had been a bit more imaginative about I might be salivating for Russian blood myself.
Not remotely comparable. Ukraine, understandably, doesn’t want to be under Russian rule, not when it’s lead to the deaths of tens of millions of Ukrainians over the years.
You’re much too credulous about Russian propaganda, no matter how much you claim not to read it. The Russian government has lied to you, and you’ve bought it completely.
I don’t see why you should be salivating for Russian blood either way. I certainly don’t. You’ve got a habit of blowing things out of proportion – it’s no wonder you’re so susceptible to Putin’s propaganda. Stating something clearly doesn’t mean someone is telling the truth.
Tens of millions? Now you’re just being difficult.
I’m thinking throughout the centuries, not just acts like the Holomodor. The Russians lied to you about their reasons for invading, and they’ll keep lying to you. You’re much too credulous and receptive to nice-sounding propaganda.
Hell Stalin alone had tens of millions of USSR citizens killed just during his rule. Other Soviet and Russian rulers weren’t a lot better. Russia sure seems to have a lot of “enemies of the state.” Or maybe they have had a bunch of paranoid homicidal maniacs as rulers.
Or maybe six months ago the general population didn’t care about Russia one way or the other because they were living their own lives. Those lives are complicated, don’t forget. We just had our government put the screws to us over a cold virus. A lot of people have been destroyed. The people not destroyed are rich and don’t care or they’re working for the government (or a contractor).
Then all of the sudden chickens come home to roost for Ukrainians screwing around with Russia. The general public doesn’t know what to make of it, gets the company line from the state department, and now they repeat it when it comes up.
I’m surprised so many people have bought what they’re selling.
I know what Stalin was and have heard the numbers, but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know why the nazis invaded Russia. Seems dumb.
I have a pretty good handle on what gone on post cold war and I’m just saying: we should not be involved and it’s none of our business.
We’re broke. That and nobody is killing tens of millions anywhere. That’s total fantasy.
Wow, for someone making such sweeping judgments, you sure do claim to be ill-informed as regards history. You might want to educate yourself. If you are so well informed on how Ukraine is or was screwing around with Russia, I’d love to hear it. I can’t fnid any mention of it apart from Russian state propaganda. Russian people are nice. However, their leadership is not and has never been nice. Last I looked, the Ukranians weren’t lobbing artillery rounds and missiles into civilian apartment blocks on purpose. The Russian commander at the Zaporitsia nuke plant has planted charges and is on record as saying he will blow it up before he lets the Ukrainians take it back. If he does, it will be a huge disaster that will make Chernyobl look like child’s play.
I guess you also don’t believe the videos showing people who are clearly civilians with their hands zip tied behind their backs and shot in the head. If Russia wanted to invade Ukraine fine. I might not agree, but it’s their business. Where they cross the line is the killing of civilians on purpose. Not by accident, on purpose.
Do you also believe the Russians when they say the explosions recently at the Crimean airfield (which destroyed 10-15 aircraft in separate revetments as verified by commercial sat photos) was because somebody was ignoring fire safety measures? If you believe some of their propaganda, you have to believe it all. You don’t get to pick and choose…
Not knowing history from class thirty years ago doesn’t mean I can’t see what’s going on
I just have listened to Russian statements with respect to what they’re doing and why. I have zero faith in my own politicians and have seen what shutty things they do to people, especially when it comes to war. I went to the gulf War and have watched Iraq, Afghanistan and lybia over the years. I don’t know what more to tell you. My experience tells me they can’t be trusted.
Incidentally, with respect to these guys picking and choosing, I’ve watched Fukushima for over a decade and the complete disinterest the west has had with respect to that ongoing catastrophe. It was only March of this year that they got into the unit 1 core and it’s worse than even the most pessimistic projection. So when the west says they’re worried about a nuke plant, we’ll, they’ve been ignoring another one
These guys are risking nuclear war over a border dispute. They have no right to endanger a population of over 300 million because they’re used to that stick up their rear end.
And they’re dragging all of Europe into it. You’re for that?
I just have listened to Russian statements with respect to what they’re doing and why. I have zero faith in my own politicians –
Emigrate to Russia and comment on how you like it. You should shut up now. You already poisoned this well.
That’s on level with a pep talk before a junior high school basketball game.
There are vast fortunes being made trafficking weapons to this conflict. People that support it have to turn their brains off to prevent cognitive dissonance.
They’re selling f35, ah64, m1 and much more to Poland, turning their population into a branch of the US military.
Maybe all of you people should emigrate to the Ukraine and put your money where your mouth is.
This forum is about a Moon-observing-cubesat-launched-on-Artemis 1.
You have poisoned this well. Comment about space. A few asides are fine but you and the Musk crowd just keep going.
Musk is on the war side, but okay. Sorry and food luck.
If you have zero faith in your own politicians, give the Russian ones a try. I think you’ll find them far worse. Also, by the way, I haven’t made any of my judgements on the Ukraine war based on what US politicians have said. I’ve made my judgements based on video on the ground, the fact that many Russian statements have proven to be outright lies, and the fact that every other country in Europe has been scared sh*tless by this invasion. The fact that you take what the Russians say at face value but discount everything everyone in the West is saying is interesting, and a bit troubling.
I only started talking about that because of ISS situation.
The other fellow was correct that this isn’t isn’t place to discuss the war overall.
Sorry again.
“Spacex was badgering them “
Do you know what Badgering means?
The FCC set up a the rural broadband subsidy program and asked companies to apply for it.
SpaceX was one of multiple awardees who were first awarded grants, then had them cancelled.
I don’t see any badgering there.
Sorry. Poor choice of words on that one.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/m…
St Elon is running out of money
This cube sat will fly regardless of how much money is in Musk’s checking account, or how much Tesla stock he sells to fund his spat with Twitter.
He just needs some folding money to buy some good lawyers. So $264 billion minus $7 billion leaves him with about $257 billion…
The SLS is going up with 100,000 people coming to watch….along with the rest of the planet who will give the U.S. a standing ovation.
And all the Musk fanboys will hang their heads in shame; The anti-American libertarian whack jobs who have worked against their own space program for years, writing libraries of death-to-SLS propaganda. Disgusting.
Just as many people watch NASCAR for the wrecks, your 100,000 might even be out of the blast zone.
And the SpaceX fans will shame a $30B rocket that can’t even lift biannually what the Falcon9 does on a monthly basis.
LOL….the hobby rocket is no Moon rocket. Even the heavy is not human-rated so that is not taking anybody there. Toxic blather by spacex fanboys will not change that.