NASA’s small lunar probe CAPSTONE has recovered from its recent hiccup.
The 55 pounds (25 kilograms) CAPSTONE has successfully completed its first engine burn today (July 7), an 11-minute maneuver that began at 8:30 am EDT (12.30 GMT) and changed its speed to 45 mph (72 km / h). h) as planned, according to NASA officials. he said in an update (opens in a new tab).
CAPSTONE is now about 289,000 miles (465,000 kilometers) from Earth, agency officials added. This is significantly beyond the orbit of the moon, but this is part of the plan; the spacecraft is taking a long, looping, highly fuel-efficient path that will take it into lunar orbit on November 13th.
Related: Why NASA’s small CAPSTONE spacecraft will take so long to reach the moon
Today’s burn was originally scheduled for Tuesday (July 5), but the CAPSTONE team delayed it after briefly losing contact with the cubesat. This loss of communication occurred on Monday (July 4), shortly after CAPSTONE separated from its Rocket Lab. photo spaceship bus and began his long solo walk to the moon. (CAPSTONE was launched on June 28 on top of an electron impeller from Rocket Lab, then spent a week in Earth orbit, advancing in a spiral farther and farther from our planet through photon engine burns. )
The CAPSTONE team announced yesterday morning (July 6) that yes contact restored with the probe the size of a microwave. And mission engineers have already figured out what caused the abandonment.
On Monday, while investigating inconsistent data from CAPSTONE, NASA technicians observed Deep space network“The spacecraft’s operations team attempted to access the diagnostic data on the spacecraft’s radio and sent an order with an inappropriate format that rendered the radio inoperable,” officials wrote. NASA a another update today (opens in a new tab).
“The spacecraft’s error detection system should have restarted the radio immediately, but it didn’t because of a failure in the spacecraft’s flight software,” they added. “CAPSTONE’s autonomous flight software system finally erased the fault and reconnected the spacecraft with the ground, allowing the team to implement recovery procedures and begin commanding the spacecraft again.”
CAPSTONE is now fully up to date, if today’s cream is an indication. And the probe will have a chance to put things back together soon: the mission team plans to carry out another burn to correct the trajectory on Saturday (July 9).
After that, there will be a series of other burns, which will allow CAPSTONE to fine-tune its course to the moon. If all goes according to plan, the cubesat will slide into a nearby highly elliptical rectilinear (NRHO) halo orbit around Earth’s nearest neighbor in about four months.
The lunar NRHO is believed to be very stable, which explains why NASA chose it for its Gateway space station, an important part of the agency. Artemis program of exploring the moon. But no spacecraft has ever occupied a lunar NRHO before. CAPSTONE will spend at least six months in orbit, helping engineers and mission planners verify its supposed stability.
CAPSTONE also offers two technology demonstrations that could help future spacecraft navigate near the Moon without as much tracking from Earth as is currently required, NASA officials have said.
CAPSTONE (short for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment”) is a NASA project, but the Colorado Advanced Space Company operates the mission with a $ 20 million contract that the space agency awarded the 2019.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over 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 a new tab). follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or activated Facebook (opens in a new tab).