NASA CAPSTONE lunar probe overcomes interference en route to moon orbit
NASA’s tiny CAPSTONE probe has bounced off a troubling malfunction and is on track to reach the moon as planned this month, mission team members said.
CAPSTONEwhich is about the size of a microwave oven, entered a protective “safe mode” after a problem during an engine fire on Sept. 8 that caused the probe to tumble.
Members of the mission team eventually identified the likely cause of the failure as a problem with a valve in the probe’s propulsion system. They have been working hard for the past few weeks to fix the problem, finally Make CAPSTONE stop spinning early October.
And now the 55 pounds (25 kilograms) cubes appears to be fully operational again: CAPSTONE conducted a trajectory-correcting engine fire as scheduled on Thursday (October 27), keeping it on track for an arrival in orbit around the Moon on Nov. 13, mission team members said.
Related: Why It Takes So Long For NASA’s Tiny CAPSTONE Probe To Reach The Moon
Thursday’s engine fire lasted about 220 seconds, which was the expected duration, representatives of Colorado-based company Advanced Space, which operates CAPSTONE for NASA, said. said in an update on Monday (opens in new tab) (October 31st).
The maneuver took place while CAPSTONE was 308,076 miles (495,800 kilometers) from Earth, the company added.
The Cubesat is therefore located beyond the moon, which orbits about 385,000 km from Earth. If all goes according to plan, CAPSTONE will perform two more orbit-correcting burns to return to the moon, eventually inserting itself into a highly elliptical near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) on Nov. 13.
Gateway, a small space station orbiting the moon that is an important part of NASA’s Artemis program, will also occupy a lunar NRHO. CAPSTONE will characterize this orbit and verify its presumed stability ahead of Gateway construction, which is expected to begin in a few years.
CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, launched atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster on June 28, the start of a long, circuitous journey to the moon.
A week later, the mission team lost contact with CAPSTONE shortly after the probe broke away from Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft bus. But team members quickly solved that problem, which was caused by an incorrectly formatted command.
CAPSTONE’s mission is scheduled to last at least six months after it reaches the moon. In addition to the orbit verification work, the small probe will also conduct some navigation and communications experiments, some in conjunction with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Mike Wall is the author of “Outside (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or facebook (opens in new tab).
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