No earlier than Dec. 1, NASA's Lunar Flashlight mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The tiny satellite will use a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. This is the first time that multiple colored lasers will be used to seek out ice inside these dark craters. The lasers will be used to hunt for surface water ice inside dark regions on the Moon that haven’t seen sunlight in billions of years. The spacecraft’s orbit – called a near-rectilinear halo orbit – will take it 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) from the Moon at its most distant point; at its closest approach, the satellite will graze the surface of the Moon, coming within 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the lunar South Pole. The Lunar Flashlight mission is managed by NASAJPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Lunar Flashlight will be operated by Georgia Tech, including ...