ExploreAstro at Caltech IPAC

@exploreastro.bsky.social

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Sharing out-of-this-world astrophysics with our on-this-world audience. Brought to you by @caltechipac.bsky.social.

My name is Bethany Ehlmann. I'm a professor of planetary science at Caltech, and I am the principal investigator of Lunar Trailblazer. Lunar Trailblazer is a small satellite mission to the Moon. It's a NASA mission that will orbit the Moon in order to map the form, the amount, and get an understanding of the distribution of water on the Moon and the lunar water cycle.

This is incredibly exciting because up until, you know, a couple of decades ago, we didn't even know there was water on the Moon. But now with Lunar Trailblazer, we're going to peer into permanently shadowed craters on the Moon's poles to look for water ice. We're going to understand why we get a faint signature of water or hydroxyl on the sunlit surface of the Moon, and we're going to provide some of the best maps of temperature and mineralogy to guide the exploration on the surface with robots and astronauts to come.