Ice-hunting Lunar Trailblazer and IM-2 nearly ready for January 2025 launch

From the article

>Potentially beating China there is the United States, pending the early Jan. 2025 co-launch of two key spacecraft, the NASA Lunar Trailblazer orbiter and the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

>As a NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program spacecraft, Lunar Trailblazer’s lower-budget scientific mission is considered a secondary but still important ice snooping project. It will be launched with the IM-2, a Nova-C lunar lander dubbed Athena. The IM-2 lander and Lunar Trailblazer moon orbiter will launch together on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

>Intuitive Machines spokesperson Josh Marshall told *SpaceNews* that they plan on delivering the IM-2 lunar lander to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in the 4th quarter of 2024, “with an extended mission window reaching into January.”