NASA’s Orion spacecraft is approaching the Gateway in lunar orbit. Credit: NASA
Before the end of this decade, NASA will send astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. As part of the Artemis program, NASA also plans to create an infrastructure that will allow for a “long-term lunar exploration program.” A key part of this is the Lunar Gateway, an orbital space station that will facilitate regular travel to and from the lunar surface. In addition to being a docking point for ships coming and going from Earth, the station will also allow long missions to Mars.
The portal will have what is known in orbital mechanics as “close rectilinear halo orbit” (NRHO), which means that it will orbit the moon from pole to pole. To test the long-term stability of this orbit, NASA will send the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPSTONE) technology experiment for operations and navigation to the moon by the end of May. This nine-month CubeSat mission will be the first spacecraft to test this orbit and demonstrate its benefits to the Gateway.
CAPSTONE, a 12-unit CubeSat owned and operated by Advanced Space in Westminster, Colorado, is a technology demonstrator that will test the stability of the halo orbit and several important systems. The mission is scheduled to begin on May 31 (earliest), when a Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft will launch CAPSTONE during its four-month voyage to the moon. After a series of “cleansing” maneuvers that will put the spacecraft into orbit, CAPSTONE will spend at least six months around the moon, firing only occasionally to maintain its orbit.
Credit: NASA
This elliptical orbit will take CAPSTONE along a path that leads from one lunar pole to the other, tracing a constant oval pattern around the moon. It will take nearly a week to complete, and CubeSat will be the slowest to move around the South Pole, where it will be furthest from the surface (76,000 km, 47,000 miles). When it reaches over the North Pole, the spacecraft will reach its peak speed and make its closest passage to a surface of 3,400 km (2,100 miles).
Eloud Agassid, deputy program manager for small spacecraft technology at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told NASA in a press release: “CAPSTONE will be precisely controlled and maintained and will benefit greatly from the near-stable physics of its near-rectilinear orbit. the burns will be scheduled to give the spacecraft an extra boost, as it naturally gains momentum – requiring much less fuel than a more circular orbit would require.
“This orbit has the added bonus of allowing the Gateway to have optimal communication with future Artemis missions operating on the lunar surface and back to Earth. This could open up new opportunities for future lunar scientific and research efforts. “
Animation of the CAPSTONE mission in orbit to the moon. Credit: NASA / Daniel Ruther
These tests will confirm the power and propulsion requirements to maintain its orbit, as predicted by NASA models, reducing logistical uncertainty. During its many orbits, CAPSTONE will demonstrate the reliability of the innovative space-to-space navigation system. This system will measure the position of CAPSTONE CubeSat relative to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) – which has been in lunar orbit since 2009 – without relying on ground stations.
To test this system, CAPSTONE will carry a second special flight computer and radio that will perform calculations to determine where CubeSat is in its orbital path. The data obtained from this LRO crossover will be used to measure how far the two satellites are and how fast this distance is changing. This peer-to-peer information sharing will allow mission controllers to evaluate CAPSTONE’s stand-alone navigation software and determine CubeSat’s position in real time.
By validating this software, known as the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS), future NASA missions (as well as agencies and trading partners) will be able to locate their spacecraft without relying on Earth-based tracking systems. This comes with the added benefit of freeing up bandwidth, which allows mission controllers to transmit scientific data as part of a relatively routine tracking process.
NASA engineers also expect that the NRHO will allow them to place much larger spacecraft in orbit around the moon for about 15 years. This includes the Gateway itself and the spacecraft that will dock with it to refuel or spend the next leg of its journey – ie. the Orion spacecraft and the Deep Space Transport (DST). This is crucial to the architecture of NASA’s Moon to Mars mission, which will include sending manned missions to the Red Planet in the early 2030s.
NASA funds CubeSat Pathfinder mission to unique lunar orbit provided by Universe Today
CubeSat flies to the moon to make sure Lunar Gateway’s orbit is stable (2022, May 16), extracted on May 16, 2022 from
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