This month is marked by the launch of two NASA missions spearheaded by Caltech, occurring one after another. NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer is set to depart from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than February 26, while NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Central California no sooner than February 28.
Lunar Trailblazer aims to survey water on the Moon, enhancing comprehension of the lunar water cycle and pinpointing resources for upcoming human endeavors. SPHEREx will gaze outward into the universe, exploring the origins and development of the cosmos as well as the components vital for life within our galaxy.
Both missions were chosen through competitive NASA initiatives, where a principal investigator, or PI, along with their team, submits comprehensive mission proposals to NASA. The PI for Lunar Trailblazer is Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary science and the Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair as well as the director of the Keck Institute for Space Studies. The mission was approved for flight in 2019 as part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx), which funds low-budget, higher-risk endeavors that have the potential for significant planetary science achievements.
Lunar Trailblazer will ride into space with Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar lander. Roughly 48 minutes post-launch, the spacecraft will detach from the rocket and commence its months-long journey to the Moon, where it will remain in orbit for two years.
“Witnessing a concept from CAD designs over six years ago transform into real hardware set to be launched for scientific exploration is incredibly satisfying,” Ehlmann expresses. “It’s exhilarating to see the fulfillment of years of dedication from the team.”
SPHEREx is directed by Jamie Bock, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Physics at Caltech and senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is operated by Caltech. Also selected for flight in 2019, it falls under NASA’s Explorers Program as a Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX). Bock and his team proposed the SPHEREx idea to NASA twice before its eventual selection, resulting in nearly 3,000 pages of meticulously assembled scientific and technical documents.
“The crucial moment occurs when finalizing the reports,” stated Bock in a Caltech article regarding the SPHEREx proposal process. “That always comes right down to the deadline. We gathered daily and on weekends in what we called the ‘war room.’ It was stocked with snacks, and we plastered the walls with proposal pages. I quickly realized that it’s impossible for one individual to manage all the sections involved in the proposal. Your success or failure relies on your team.”
The primary role of the PI is to ensure the mission is executed to achieve its scientific objectives. This involves crafting the initial idea and design of the instrument as well as organizing the team structure. Additionally, it necessitates close collaboration with a project manager on a daily basis to monitor progress and make determinations on risk and expenses; in this scenario, both Ehlmann and Bock collaborate closely with project managers at JPL.
In other terms, a mission PI embodies a distinctive combination of expertise in science, engineering, and leadership.
“Being a PI entails establishing the primary scientific aims of the mission and forming team collaborations. It subsequently demands the maintenance of these goals over the years alongside the challenges of hardware development,” Ehlmann explains. “It necessitates ongoing vigilance to ensure that design and engineering implementation choices, along with team organization, will ultimately facilitate the scientific outcomes—balancing costs, risks, and capabilities.”
Bock articulates that his guiding principle in leading a competitive mission is to streamline the design to make it as efficient as possible “so that the project design and team can concentrate on excelling in their primary responsibilities, while minimizing unnecessary features. These decisions shape the trajectory of the project from the beginning, where a solid structure naturally leads to effective execution.”
Both missions owe their existence to numerous collaborators worldwide. Furthermore, both endeavors leverage the combined strengths of Caltech, NASA’s JPL, and IPAC, an astronomical facility at Caltech, all situated in Pasadena.
JPL oversees both Lunar Trailblazer and SPHEREx for NASA, with IPAC playing an integral role in both projects. For Lunar Trailblazer, IPAC is designated as the operations center, differing from the usual arrangement where a NASA facility or aerospace partner fulfills this role. This leverages IPAC’s decades of experience in instrument operation on space telescopes and data processing.
Having the operations center situated on campus makes it more accessible to undergraduate students: Both Caltech and Pasadena City College students are involved with Lunar Trailblazer.
“Being a PI at Caltech enables you to integrate mission activities into the student experience,” Ehlmann states.
For SPHEREx, IPAC will not only process the mission’s data coming from space but also act as the main public data repository. “Caltech is an ideal setting for a mission of this magnitude due to the strong relations between Caltech, JPL, and IPAC,” Bock comments. “What makes this collaboration successful is a ‘badge-less environment,’ where our relatively small team interacts closely daily without barriers. It was crucial that many personal relationships were firmly established across the team prior to the project’s commencement. Caltech undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and staff have significantly contributed in all phases of the project.”
Caltech can also take pride in its faculty serving as PIs on other NASA missions. Chris Martin, the Edward C. Stone Professor of Physics and director of Caltech Optical Observatories, acted as the PI for NASA’s GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer), which was operational from 2003 to 2013, while Fiona Harrison, the Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, currently leads two NASA missions. She is the PI of NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), launched in 2012 and still operational, as well as UVEX (Ultraviolet Explorer), which was recently cleared for launch in 2024.
By the way, Caltech faculty have also held roles as project scientists for various NASA missions (such as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, for which Ken Farley, the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geochemistry, serves as the project scientist), but these missions are not contested for by PIs and are instead overseen by NASA.
Launch day coverage for both missions will be accessible on NASA’s website and NASA+. Lunar Trailblazer launch coverage is expected to commence around 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time on February 26. SPHEREx launch coverage is set to start at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Time on February 28, with the launch window opening at 7:09 p.m.
More Information About Lunar Trailblazer
Beyond management duties, JPL supplies system engineering, mission assurance, the HVM3 instrument, along with mission design and navigation. Lockheed Martin Space is responsible for creating the spacecraft, integrating the flight system, and aiding operations under contract with Caltech. The University of Oxford created and provided the LTM instrument, funded by the United Kingdom Space Agency. Lunar Trailblazer, part of NASA’s Lunar Discovery Exploration Program (LDEP), is coordinated by NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office (PMPO) at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in Washington, D.C.
More Information about SPHEREx
BAE Systems (previously Ball Aerospace) constructed the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The scientific analysis of the SPHEREx data will be performed by a consortium of scientists across 10 institutions in the US, two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly accessible at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.