LITTLETON, Colo. — The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Wednesday evening. On board is the Lunar Trailblazer orbiter, which was built by Lockheed Martin on its Waterton campus in Littleton, Colorado.
Trailblazer’s mission is to produce high-resolution mapping of water on the lunar surface. The existence of water on the Moon is a recent discovery, and Trailblazer is designed to find its exact location and help understand its form.
Lockheed Martin said future manned missions to the Moon can then use that water to create breathable oxygen and/or fuel.
It’s expected to take Trailblazer four to seven months to get into orbit, and it should start sending back data soon after.
Trailblazer weighs about 440 pounds and is 11 ½ feet wide with its solar panels fully deployed. Scientists describe it as looking similar to a washing machine. It took four years to build at the Waterton campus and is part of a new generation of lower-cost, smaller spacecraft expected to be used in future missions to Mars.
Lockheed Martin would not provide the exact cost of the orbiter but the total cost of the mission that began Wednesday evening is $89 million.
Lockheed Martin’s Littleton operation has a storied history in space exploration. On July 20, 1976, Viking 1, which was built in Littleton, became the first spacecraft to land on Mars.
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