[5] Lunar Trailblazer was selected to be part of NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program in 2019.
[6] The mission has four scientific objectives:[3] In addition, the spacecraft will search for good locations for future lunar landings.
They detected the presence of hydrogen in the upper half-meter (1.5 feet) of the lunar surface, which was most likely evidence of water ice.
This discovery was debated in the scientific community as missions to study the lunar surface waned and further data was unavailable—until, in 2009, LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) jettisoned one of its empty propellant tanks in a controlled collision to impact an area of the Moon that lay in permanent shadow to test for the presence of ice.
When the tank hit, it created a plume that was observed by both the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and the LCROSS spacecraft as well as telescopes on Earth.
Tremendous amounts of data were captured from the observed plume, including signatures of water ice and other volatiles.
[11] Also in 2009, researchers reviewing data from three separate spacecraft—Chandrayaan-1,[12] Deep Impact,[13] and Cassini[14]—extracted a hydration signature throughout the whole lunar surface.
This was a surprise to the lunar science community, particularly because this meant that water may be present on boiling-hot sunlit portions of the Moon.
The High Resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) will gather and map shortwave infrared spectral data of the lunar surface.