Clementine 1 - Lunar Polar Ice Discovery

Clementine 1 was a low budget probe funded by the US Department of Defense's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and launched in 1994. It became the first probe to discover ice at the lunar probes, and had great influence in the funding of subsequent NASA probes to further analyze the lunar polar craters.

Clementine 1 entered a polar orbit around the Moon in order to map its entire surface, both visually and spectrally to get a general assessment of the Moon's minerology. Clementine 1 orbited the Moon for more than two months, totaling over 300 orbits, from February 19 to May 5, 1994. Clementine 1 left lunar orbit to rendezvous with near Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos, but a computer malfunction caused the spacecraft to fail before the asteroid rendezvous mission could get underway.

In addition to the valuable data it collected on the Moon as a result of being the first probe to map the Moon using modern instruments, Clementine 1 was a fantastic sociopolitical success on its lunar leg because it discovered ice at the lunar south pole, the first indication of any concentration of water on the Moon.

As a result of the ice discovery, there was greatly renewed interest in the Moon, resulting in the subsequent funding of additional probes, including the NASA Lunar Prospector, followed by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and LCROSS Polar Crater Impactor.

Some of the key people responsible for the promotion and success of Clementine 1 were advocates of lunar and asteroidal resources utilization, but this was not prominently promoted as a reason for the mission, and some people wanted to keep this low profile. Back then, when the name "Clementine" was mentioned, some people said no, that the official name is the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE), and expressed fear that the mission would get ridiculed and canceled if the mission was called "Clementine" and associated with prospecting of lunar and asteroidal resources. Indeed, President Clinton later line item vetoed Clementine 2, amidst commentary ridiculing the budget item by the name Clementine. As sometimes happens, historical accounts now differ. Revisionist based on hindsight?

The probe is now predominantly called Clementine. I don't see much of "Clementine 1" and "Clementine 2", mainly just Clementine.

Here is the official mission patch, straight from an official document on the National Research Laboratory's website (though it says it was revised in 2019 after 25 years, and I haven't seen the 1994 version). This highlights the Clementine rhyme about "a miner, 49er, and his daughter Clementine ... his shoe was #9". Note that the asteroid is in the logo, and the #9 is on the asteroid. Clementine also has a miner's pick shovel on her shoulder. There were also comments that the probe would be "lost and gone forever" after the mission, like the phrase in the rhyme. (Of course, lost and gone forever describes many space probes after their mission, but that's what people said, just for the historical record.)

Source: https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Portals/38/PDF%20Files/Clementine_2019_BOOKLET.pdf

Below is what I was told was an unofficial logo at the time, which differs a little bit (necklace and some other details), maybe an earlier or later version, but I've been told by somebody who was looking for this particular version that they didn't see it anywhere else. For that reason, I'm keeping it up on the website rather than using only the high resolution graphic which is currently available on the web.

BMDO = Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
NRL = Naval Research Laboratory
LLNL = Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories

It was remarkable that in the 20th century, professionals working in the Defense Department thought it was best to hide their advocacy of space resources, and that the idea we could shoot down ballistic missiles from the Soviet Union and that they couldn't adapt and find countermeasures to defeat such an expensive and difficult task ... was somehow reasonable ... while mining the Moon as asteroids (which are not against us, and do not adapt) was deemed unreasonable by the old guard.

It's also remarkable that nobody still seems interested in "defense" against extinction of the human species against biotechnology and nanotechnology, which can only be done by mining the Moon and/or asteroids near Earth for space industrialization and colonization.

Noooo.... Trillions of dollars must be spent on military contractors so we can fight for the limited resources in the Middle East, and it's preferred to spend untold additional trillions creating new weapons.

In that way, the human species will become like the daughter Clementine -- lost and gone forever!

... unless Clementine did indeed start an ice rush to the lunar poles ...

PERMANENT.com > Lunar Resources (Mining The Moon) > Probes, History and Future > Clementine 1

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