This illustration shows NASA's Lunar Flashlight carrying out a trajectory correction maneuver with the Moon and Earth in the background. Powered by the small satellite's four thrusters, the maneuver is needed to reach lunar orbit. Lunar Flashlight launched Nov. 30, 2022, and will take about four months to reach its science orbit to seek out surface water ice in the darkest craters of the Moon's South Pole. A technology demonstration, the small satellite, or SmallSat, will use a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. To achieve the mission's goals with the satellite's limited amount of propellent, Lunar Flashlight will employ an energy-efficient near-rectilinear halo orbit, taking it within 9 miles (15 kilometers) of the lunar South Pole and 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) away at its farthest point. Only one other spacecraft has employed this type of orbit: NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission, which launched in June 2022. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25258

These images show two observations of NASA's Lunar Flashlight and the private ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 1 as the two spacecraft, seen as a pair of dots, journey to the Moon. In Figure A, the images have been joined sequentially to create an animated GIF. The larger HAKUTO-R lunar lander appears as a large black dot, whereas the smaller Lunar Flashlight, which is about the size of a briefcase, appears as a fuzzy grouping of gray pixels. Stars appear as long trails. Both missions launched on Dec. 11, 2022, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with Lunar Flashlight and HAKUTO-R spacecraft subsequently deploying from it. Astronomer Vishnu Reddy and graduate student Adam Battle, both from University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Space4 Center, used a remote 0.5-meter (1.6-foot) telescope in Australia to track the small spacecraft. They used data from the Horizons System at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to find their position in the sky. These images were acquired about 39 hours after launch, when the two spacecraft were 145,000 miles (235,000 kilometers) from Earth. Black and white in the images have been inverted so that the brighter the object, the darker it is. To detect the faint reflected light from both spacecraft, they stacked 80 images, each from a 10-second exposure (for a total exposure time of 800 seconds), based on the rate of motion and direction of the spacecraft. This method resulted in stars appearing as long trails and the two spacecraft appearing as dots. Lunar Flashlight is a small satellite mission planning to use lasers to seek out surface water ice inside permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's South Pole. The small satellite is expected to reach its science orbit around the Moon in April 2023. Movie available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25257

This illustration shows NASA's Lunar Flashlight, with its four solar arrays deployed, shortly after launch. The small satellite, or SmallSat, launched Nov. 30, 2022, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a rideshare with ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 1. It will take about three months to reach its science orbit to seek out surface water ice in the darkest craters of the Moon's South Pole. A technology demonstration, Lunar Flashlight will use a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. This is the first time that multiple colored lasers will be used to seek out ice inside these dark regions on the Moon, which haven't seen sunlight in billions of years. Should the lasers hit bare rock or regolith (broken rock and dust), the light will reflect back to the spacecraft. But if the target absorbs the light, that would indicate the presence of water ice. The greater the absorption, the more ice there may be. The science data collected by the mission will be compared with observations made by other lunar missions to help reveal the distribution of surface water ice on the Moon for potential use by future astronauts. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25626

This artist's concept shows the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a six-unit CubeSat designed to search for ice on the Moon's surface using special lasers. The spacecraft will use its near-infrared lasers to shine light into shaded polar regions on the Moon, while an onboard reflectometer will measure surface reflection and composition. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23131

This artist's concept shows a view from above the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a six-unit CubeSat designed to search for ice on the Moon's surface using special lasers. The spacecraft uses its near-infrared lasers to shine light into shaded polar regions on the Moon, while an on-board reflectometer measures surface reflection and composition. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23132