NASA’s little CAPSTONE moon probe has bounced again from its current hiccup.
The 55-pound (25 kilograms) CAPSTONE efficiently carried out its first engine burn in the present day (July 7), an 11-minute maneuver that began at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) and altered its velocity by 45 mph (72 kph) as deliberate, NASA officers said in an update (opens in new tab).
CAPSTONE is now about 289,000 miles (465,000 kilometers) from Earth, company officers added. That’s considerably past the orbit of the moon, however that is a part of the plan; the probe is taking a protracted, looping and extremely fuel-efficient path that can ship it to lunar orbit on Nov. 13.
Related: Why it’ll take NASA’s tiny CAPSTONE probe so long to reach the moon
Today’s burn was initially alleged to occur on Tuesday (July 5), however the CAPSTONE group delayed it after briefly losing contact with the cubesat. That communication loss occurred on Monday (July 4), shortly after CAPSTONE separated from its Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft bus and started its lengthy solo trek to the moon. (CAPSTONE launched on June 28 atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster, then spent every week in Earth orbit, spiraling farther and farther from our planet through Photon engine burns.)
The CAPSTONE group introduced yesterday morning (July 6) that it had re-established contact with the microwave-oven-sized probe. And mission engineers have already found out what triggered the dropout.
On Monday, whereas investigating inconsistent CAPSTONE ranging information seen by technicians with NASA’s Deep Space Network, “the spacecraft operations team attempted to access diagnostic data on the spacecraft’s radio and sent an improperly formatted command that made the radio inoperable,” NASA officers wrote in another update today (opens in new tab).Â
“The spacecraft fault detection system should have immediately rebooted the radio but did not because of a fault in the spacecraft flight software,” they added. “CAPSTONE’s autonomous flight software system eventually cleared the fault and brought the spacecraft back into communication with the ground, allowing the team to implement recovery procedures and begin commanding the spacecraft again.”
CAPSTONE is now absolutely up to the mark, if in the present day’s burn is any indication. And the probe will get an opportunity to strut its stuff once more quickly: the mission group plans to conduct one other trajectory-correcting burn on Saturday (July 9).Â
There can be a collection of different burns after that, permitting CAPSTONE to refine its course towards the moon. If all goes in accordance with plan, the cubesat will slide right into a extremely elliptical close to rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) round Earth’s nearest neighbor about 4 months from now.
The lunar NRHO is considered extremely secure, which explains why NASA selected it for its Gateway space station, an vital a part of the company’s Artemis program of moon exploration. But no spacecraft has ever occupied a lunar NRHO earlier than. CAPSTONE will spend not less than six months within the orbit, serving to engineers and mission planners confirm its purported stability.
CAPSTONE additionally carries two know-how demonstrations that would assist future spacecraft navigate close to the moon with out as a lot monitoring from Earth as is presently required, NASA officers have stated.
CAPSTONE (quick for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment”) is a NASA challenge, however Colorado firm Advanced Space operates the mission beneath a $20 million contract the space company awarded in 2019.
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e book concerning the seek 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). Â
