The toaster-sized probe will soon cover a special orbit around the moon, the path planned for NASA’s Lunar Gateway. The portal, which will be launched later this decade, will be a starting point for astronauts and equipment traveling as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The launch of this small but powerful path-finding probe will unleash the Artemis mission, finally launching the space agency’s ambitious lunar projects.
The bold small spacecraft is called the Capstone or, more formally, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. It will land on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket scheduled to launch on June 27 from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand at 9:50 p.m. local time (5:50 p.m. EDT). If that day cannot start, there will be other options between then and July 27th. Launch operators had planned to take off earlier this month, but decided to postpone it until they updated the flight software.
“We are really excited. In essence, this will be the first CubeSat launched and deployed on the moon, “said Elwood Agassid, Capstone Program Manager and Deputy Program Manager for NASA’s Small Satellite Technology Program at the Ames Research Center. “Capstone will serve as a guide to better understand the specific orbit in which the Gateway will fly and what the fuel and control requirements are for maintaining an orbit around the moon.
CubeSats collect a lot in small spaces, usually at a lower cost than larger satellites. “Cube” refers to a single standard unit that is about 4 inches per side. Many CubeSats have a 3U format, with a trio joining together to form a bread-sized configuration. Capstone is a 12U spacecraft or four of them combined. Everything is designed to fit in this compact box, including the lithium-ion battery and avionics systems, with the electronics and microcontrollers responsible for propulsion, navigation and data processing. Horizontal solar panels extend on both sides of the box, like wings.
While many spacecraft have orbited the moon, Capstone’s technology demonstrations will make it unique. In particular, it includes a positioning system that allows NASA and its trading partners to determine the exact location of the spacecraft while in lunar orbit. “On Earth, people take it for granted that GPS provides this information,” said Bradley Cheatham, chief executive of Advanced Space in Westminster, Colorado, and chief researcher at Capstone, at a virtual press conference in May. But GPS does not extend to the upper orbits of the Earth, let alone the moon. Beyond Earth orbit, researchers still rely on ground-based spacecraft tracking systems through the Deep Space Network, an international system of giant antennas operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Instead, Capstone will provide a space-to-space navigation system, taking advantage of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is already there. The pair will communicate with each other and measure the distance between them and each of their positions, regardless of ground systems, Chitham said.
Capstone will travel to the moon on a detour called a ballistic lunar transfer, which consumes little energy but takes three months to travel. (Astronauts will travel on a more direct trajectory in just a few days.) Then Capstone will rise into an oval, almost rectilinear orbit, or NRHO, which orbits the moon for a week, separated by 43,500 miles at most. your remote point. This time has the advantage of balancing the gravitational pull of the Earth, Moon and Sun, thus limiting the use of fuel, which will be important for the Gateway station.
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