Posted on 07/05/2022 1:10:18 PM PDT by Houserino
The CAPSTONE team is working to understand the problem and how to fix it.
CAPSTONE in its halo-shaped lunar orbit. Artist's illustration of NASA's tiny CAPSTONE probe in its halo-shaped lunar orbit. CAPSTONE is scheduled to arrive at the moon on Nov. 13, 2022, but that future is in doubt; mission team members lost contact with the cubesat shortly after it began flying freely on July 4. (Image credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter) CAPSTONE has gone dark.
The 55-pound (25 kilograms) NASA probe ceased communicating with its handlers yesterday (July 4), shortly after it deployed successfully from Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft bus and began its long trek to the moon.
"The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network," NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in an emailed statement today (July 5).
"If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days," Frazier added. "Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible."
Related: Why it'll take NASA's tiny CAPSTONE probe so long to reach the moon
Click here for more Space.com videos... CLOSE CAPSTONE (short for "Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment") launched atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster on June 28 and spent nearly a week in Earth orbit, spiraling farther and farther away from our planet via occasional Photon engine burns.
The mission notched two huge milestones yesterday: The Photon fired its engine for a final time, accelerating CAPSTONE out of Earth orbit and on a path toward the moon. Shortly thereafter, the microwave-oven-sized cubesat successfully separated from the spacecraft bus and began flying freely.
If all goes according to plan, CAPSTONE will take a long, looping route to the moon, finally slipping into a near rectilinear halo orbit around Earth's natural satellite on Nov. 13. The mission's main goal is to test the stability of this highly elliptical orbit, which NASA has selected for its Gateway space station, a key piece of the agency's Artemis program of lunar exploration.
RELATED STORIES: — Moon facts: Fun information about Earth's moon — Rocket Lab: Private spaceflight for small satellites — Cubesats: Tiny payloads, huge benefits for space research
CAPSTONE will also conduct some navigation and communications tests during its time in lunar orbit, the latter trials performed in conjunction with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon since 2009.
The CAPSTONE team will have to solve the communication problem to turn this vision into reality, however. That team is led by Colorado-based company Advanced Space, which operates the mission under a $20 million contract that NASA awarded in 2019.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There(opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall(opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom(opens in new tab) or on Facebook(opens in new tab).
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Me too. I hope they establish contact.
It’s texting. 📱
Or the phone is turned off 📴.
😜
In before Houston....?
” Uh oh, I hope this works out. Really don’t want any more moon delays. “
Gut NASA.
Didn’t NASA say the other day that a rocket of unknown origin struck the moon?
Somebody should freeze 🥶 that guy
“Gut NASA.”
You mean that muslim outreach thing isn’t bringing in top quality “diverse and inclusive” scientists?
I agree. NASA is a social experiment, not a center of excellence.
Would like to see a picture of the mission team...
Amen!
Fifty freakin years, and yesterday the NASA clown said we
should consider China wanting to take control of the Moon.
I hope we paid this guy in cans of Alpo.
The CAPSTONE team is working to understand the problem and how to fix it.
Call Musk
Was about 3 days to the moon, now 4 months.
It’s cause it was fired on a tiny rocket and is using lots of small boosts to raise its orbit instead of a few big ones. It’s pretty tiny.
This seems like a really Get the Latest Celebrity News interesting. I hope What’s up with CERN? that they are able to correct Did you know that Black Holes can collapse? this problem soon.
If its tiny, why not send a bunch of them? Else what’s the bother? Seems like a waste of money to launch one tiny sat, unless they used a tiny rocket.
They used Rocket Labs Electron rocket which is quite small. Half the size of a Falcon9, or more. Super cheap too, this mission is for the cheap to scout out how this new moon orbit plan they have will work.
There are low-energy transfer orbits that are economical in terms of fuel. Sounds like this was the choice for this cubesat. You can scale everything down and lighten the fuel requirement drastically. But it takes more time.
It escaped NASA’s diversity ,LOL
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