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NASA Marshall Team Delivers Tiny, Powerful ‘Lunar Flashlight’ Propulsion System 6park.com
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 6park.com
Lunar Flashlight is a low-cost, innovative CubeSat set to investigate the shadowy surface of the Moon’s South Pole. The Lunar Flashlight mission was developed and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 6park.com
Credits: NASA 6park.com
 6park.com
Daniel Cavender, Lunar Flashlight manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, shows off the CubeSat set to investigate the shadowy surface of the Moon’s South Pole. Marshall led the team responsible for developing the Lunar Flashlight Propulsion System. 6park.com
Credits: NASA 6park.com
 6park.com
Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have built some of the largest rocket engines ever to light up the icy reaches of space. Now Marshall and its commercial partners have delivered one of the smallest propulsion systems in its history, designed to help propel an upcoming NASA mission to shed new light on the Moon’s South Pole – in search of a much more useful type of ice.

Lunar Flashlight, no larger than a briefcase, is an innovative, low-cost CubeSat developed and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. As the spacecraft orbits the Moon, its near-infrared lasers will shine light onto the permanently shadowed surface of the lunar pole, while its onboard reflectometer measures surface reflection and composition to identify large ice deposits.

Expected to launch later in 2022 via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Lunar Flashlight will seek out water ice on the lunar surface, which could be collected and purified for drinking water or converted into breathable oxygen or even into rocket fuel.

NASA is seeking lunar ice deposits to answer longtime questions about the composition, quantity, and distribution of frozen water on the Moon. The mission will help determine where it exists on the surface – and whether there is enough to sustain future lunar colonies and to power advanced lunar habitats and laboratories.

The Lunar Flashlight Propulsion System was fast-tracked for design, fabrication, and testing in July 2019. “We had to scale the propulsion technology down to something that could fit into a backpack, yet with all the same challenges of larger propulsion systems,” said Daniel Cavender, manager of the project at Marshall. “This was made easier by our strategic investments in small-satellite propulsion technologies over the past few years.”