Over the last three years, NASA’s DALI‑funded team at the University of Colorado Boulder has transformed the Lunar Meteoroid Monitor (LMM) from a drawing board concept into a near‑flight‑ready prototype. LMM consists of fan‑shaped arrays of thin plastic films that deploy above the lunar surface. When dust grains—micrometeoroids—pierce the front and then the back film, they produce electrical pulses that let us calculate each particle’s mass and velocity.

In laboratory tests, we used a hypervelocity accelerator to fire dust grains at speeds exceeding 1 km/s into our films. These experiments yielded the first measurements of how particles slow down as they penetrate a 3‑micron film, providing the calibration for LMM’s timing and mass‑measurement electronics. We also built and vetted low‑power electronics that survive the long lunar night and demonstrated our mechanism for unfolding the film arrays on the Moon.

By measuring dust‑impact rates and energies, LMM will shed light on how micrometeoroid bombardment releases water and other ices trapped in permanently shadowed craters. Over the next six months, we will complete additional penetration tests to refine our slowdown calibration curves and run full environmental and deployment trials. These final steps will bring LMM to Technology Readiness Level 6.