NASA SEES Interns Tackle Real-World Challenges in Lunar Exploration

What happened

The IM-3 lander, Trinity, is scheduled to touch down on the Moon in the Reiner Gamma region in 2027. The NASA STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) Internship Program at the University of Texas Center for Space Research places high school students on small, mission-focused research teams mentored by NASA, academic, and industry experts. NASA is a space exploration and public company founded in 1958.

During summer 2026, the SEES Mission Architecture Tool for Research, Integration, and eXploration (MATRIX) team focused on applying a method for measuring propellant mass in microgravity, where liquid fuel clings to tank walls instead of settling – a challenge central to NASA’s Artemis missions. The MATRIX team was mentored by Dr.

Kevin Crosby, who, along with colleagues at NASA, developed the Modal Propellant Gauging (MPG) approach to microgravity propellant mass gauging at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. MPG operates with the acoustic response of propellant tanks to estimate the mass of fuel inside a tank.

The method has been used successfully in several spaceflight experiments and is scheduled for demonstration on the Intuitive Machines IM-3 mission. The team developed models for predicting when MPG can take reliable readings during the mission, giving the interns direct experience with a technology preparing for spaceflight and lunar surface operations.

Reconstructing a Lunar Mission from Public Data The MATRIX team relied entirely on publicly available sources, including Intuitive Machines’ published mission data. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) provided detailed trajectory records for the IM-1 and IM-2 missions.

Because a complete IM-3 trajectory is not public, the team wrote a reconstruction algorithm using published IM-1 and IM-2 flight data.