Mission Summary
Clementine was the first American spacecraft sent to the Moon in more than 20 years, and it returned tantalizing early evidence of water ice at the lunar south pole. Launched January 25, 1994, it was a joint project of the Department of Defense and NASA, built mainly to test lightweight sensors and other technologies for the Strategic Defense Initiative.
After looping out from Earth, Clementine entered a polar orbit around the Moon on February 19, 1994 and spent the next two months mapping the surface, transmitting about 1.6 million images. For the first time, scientists could see the entire lunar landscape, including the polar regions. Its planned follow-on, a flyby of the asteroid Geographos, was lost when a computer fault fired a thruster, drained the propellant, and left the spacecraft tumbling.
The mission’s most lasting result came later. In 1996 the Department of Defense announced that Clementine’s radar data pointed to ice in a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole, an uncertain but provocative finding that helped drive the search for lunar water. The project’s lean approach also became a model for NASA’s Faster, Better, Cheaper missions.
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