Mission record
Lunar IceCube
National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Launched
Explore trajectoryFailed · Failure
A NASA Artemis I CubeSat built to investigate lunar ice. A brief Goldstone downlink was detected, but there were no usable navigation data and sustained contact was not established.
- Destinations
- Launch vehicle
- SLS Block 1 Crew
- Launch site
- Cape Canaveral, United States
- Countries
- United States
- Mission types
- Orbiter
Chronology
Mission timeline
Loss of contact
Brief downlink detected; sustained contact was not established
JPL reported about one hour of Lunar IceCube downlink at Goldstone, with no usable navigation data and no signal otherwise. ESA later summarized the mission as having established no communication after launch. The downlink is not a recovered six-dimensional spacecraft state.
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Lunar IceCube · Spacecraft
Destinations: Moon
Trajectory record
Time-dependent navigation trajectory
Source states place the model at the selected time. Reconstructed flight, estimates, predictions and historical mission plans are identified by interval; gaps remain visible.
Source records and sampling assumptions are retained with the repository data. Model attitude and surface appearance are illustrative.
- Lunar IceCube: Physically reconstructed based on publicly available data · first five ICPS-carried minutes only; free flight unresolved · November 16, 2022 to November 16, 2022
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through October 12, 2026
- Extending the Internet into space | OPS Portal — ESAMission page · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- NASA’s Moon-observing CubeSat Ready for Artemis Launch - NASA — NASAMission page · Supports: mission claims
- Artemis I - NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog — NSSDCAMission page · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Busek BIT-3 source hardware and Lunar IceCube/LunaH-Map configuration drawings, 2018 symposium — OTHERTechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- Trajectory Design and Early Mission Operations for the Lunar IceCube Mission - NTRS — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- Lombardo (2023) doctoral thesis: Navigation design and flight dynamics operations of the ArgoMoon cis-lunar CubeSat — OTHERTechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- Jones et al. (2023), Initial Acquisition Orbit Determination for NEAScout and the Artemis I Secondary Payloads, AAS 23-104 — JPLPaper · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- DE440s planetary ephemeris kernel — NAIFEphemeris · Supports: mission claims
- NAIF0012 leap-seconds kernel — NAIFSpice · Supports: mission claims
- DE421 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFTechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- DE440 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- IAU rotational elements and body radii (PCK 00011) — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA global lunar height maps, LDEM_4 V3 original PDS source label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA 2023 south-polar elevation, uncertainty and effective-resolution maps — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Seen From Above: LROC site and terrain context — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Moon Facts — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context
- SLDEM2015 Blue Ghost region: original PDS elevation-grid label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- JPL Solar System Dynamics Astrodynamic Parameters — JPLOther · Supports: destination/body context
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context