The heat-flow probe is designed to measure heat from the lunar interior.

Today, Jan. 15 is a day Texas Tech University’s Seiichi Nagihara has been working toward for a very long time – more than 15 years, to be exact. 

Since 2008, the geophysics professor has been publishing research about the creation of a heat-flow probe that could sit on the surface of the Moon and accurately measure the amount of heat coming from its interior. In 2019, NASA selected his design to fly on a future lunar mission.

And today, his heat-flow probe is finally on its way to the Moon.

Its official name is the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER). Developed jointly by Texas Tech and Honeybee Robotics, LISTER is flying aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander, which launched this morning on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In 45 days, it will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.

After Blue Ghost lands on the Moon, Nagihara and his team will remotely control LISTER from their mission operation center at Honeybee Robotics in California. They will be in constant communication with NASA and Firefly Aerospace throughout the mission, which will last about 14 days on the lunar surface.

“There will be constant radio communication between the spacecraft and us,” Nagihara notes. “LISTER is programmed to respond to commands sent from us for its every movement. We will monitor LISTER’s activity through the cameras on the spacecraft. 

“We will also download the data collected by LISTER from time to time. My main responsibility is to analyze the data downlinked from LISTER and inform the engineers what steps to take next.”

LISTER is one of 10 NASA instruments and first-of-their-kind demonstrations included in this mission to further our understanding of the Moon and its environment. As NASA and its industry partners plan for continued exploration of the Moon under the Artemis campaign, in preparation for future long-duration missions to Mars, this greater knowledge will help teams of researchers and astronauts find the safest ways to study, live and work on the lunar surface.

LISTER plays an integral role in that effort, measuring the flow of heat from the Moon’s interior. Its sophisticated pneumatic drill will penetrate three meters into the dusty lunar regolith – that is, the layer of dust, rock and pebbles that covers the Moon’s surface. Every half meter it descends, the drilling system will pause and extend a custom-built thermal probe into the lunar regolith. LISTER will measure two different aspects of heat flow: thermal gradient, or the changes in temperature at various depths, and thermal conductivity, or the subsurface material’s ability to let heat pass through it.

“The flow of heat that originates from the interior of the Moon can be measured only by landing an instrument like LISTER on the Moon; it cannot be measured or estimated from sky by orbiting satellites (e.g., weather satellites for Earth),” Nagihara says. “There have been only two measurements of heat flow on the Moon, and both were done by the Apollo astronauts in the 1970s. Because humans have not returned to the Moon since, there has been no additional heat flow data collected on the Moon – or any other moon or planet for that matter, because they have not been visited by humans, yet. 

“LISTER, if successful, will be the very first time heat-flow data were collected on the Moon solely by remote, robotic operation. That will be LISTER’s legacy. Heat flow data are very important in understanding the geologic history of any rocky planet and moon. On Earth there have been thousands of heat flow measurements done all over the world, including the bottoms of the oceans. But on the Moon, there have been only two so far.”

Demonstrating the drill’s effectiveness could lead to more innovative drilling capabilities, enabling future exploration of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. The science collected by LISTER aims to contribute to our knowledge of lunar geology, improving our ability to establish a long-term presence on the Moon under the Artemis campaign.

A second LISTER is already slated for inclusion on a future mission, which will land in the Schrödinger basin on the Moon’s far side. That mission is scheduled to launch in late 2026.