Operators lost contact with the CAPSTONE satellite bound for the Moon yesterday (July 5) after completing a set of initial tasks following its separation from the upper stage of the rocket.
CAPSTONE (short for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment”) launched from New Zealand to the summit Rocket laboratorythe Electron rocket on June 28th. On Monday (July 4), the mission successfully announced the Photon satellite rocket bus. launched the CAPSTONE spacecraft after sending it on a trajectory to the moon. Just 11 hours later, bad news arrived as a spacecraft, which aims to test an experimental orbit that NASA wants to use for its future. Front door the lunar space station, inexplicably remained silent.
In a statement (opens new tab) released Tuesday evening, Advanced Space, a Colorado-based aerospace company operating the CAPSTONE mission for NASA, said the microwave-sized satellite successfully deployed its solar arrays after separating from Photon and began charging its batteries. The spacecraft’s controllers, Advanced Space said, aimed the satellite’s antennas at Earth and made contact through a deep space earth station in Madrid and later through the Goldstone earth station. from NASA to California.
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“The operations team began controlling and commissioning the spacecraft,” Advanced Space said in the statement. “The operations team was able to determine the state of the spacecraft (position and speed) and design the initial trajectory correction maneuver.”
The controllers also turned on CAPSTONE’s propulsion system and prepared it for a burn that would have to adjust the satellite’s trajectory so it could enter orbit around the moon in November this year, the company added. company.
This maneuver, the first in a planned series of orbit corrections, however, could not be completed due to the “communication anomaly.”
In a statement emailed earlier, NASA spokeswoman Sarah Frazier he told Space.com that “the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial maneuver to correct the trajectory after the separation for several days,” if necessary.
According to Advanced Space, the CAPSTONE satellite is currently about 177,000 miles (285,000 kilometers) from Earth, following its planned ballistic transfer orbit, which provides “margins” to resolve and understand this anomaly before proceeding with the first maneuver. trajectory correction, “the company added. .
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