Lunar Trailblazer – Spaceflight Now

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, AstroForge’s Odin face post-deployment challenges

February 28, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

Two spacecraft that launched as rideshare payloads on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission are dealing with post-deployment challenges that might put the missions in jeopardy.

SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ 2nd Moon lander, 3 rideshare spacecraft

February 25, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The launch is a rideshare mission with secondary payloads from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, AstroForge and Epic Aerospace. Liftoff happened Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 7:16 p.m. EST (0016 UTC).

NASA selects SpaceX to launch mission studying interstellar space

September 28, 2020 Stephen Clark

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon, and two other ridealong payloads on a single Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in 2024.

NASA’s first interplanetary smallsats may struggle to stay under cost caps

August 5, 2019 Stephen Clark

The first set of proposals for a new class of small robotic probes NASA wants to dispatch across the solar system came in with higher cost estimates than agency officials expected, a NASA manager said Sunday.