Rocket Lab is ready to launch the CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) satellite to the Moon. This is the first official mission of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to bring people back permanently to the surface of the nearest astronomical body.
Launching aboard the Electron rocket, the teams are currently heading to 5:55 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 28, to take off from Launch Complex 1B at the Rocket Lab launch site on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand. This mission will make Electron the smallest rocket to launch a payload to the moon and the first lunar flight to take off from New Zealand.
Rocket Lab will not restore the first phase of this mission, so the Electron launch vehicle supporting this mission will fly in a standard configuration without recovery hardware.
Electron’s second phase will place the payload in an initial low Earth orbit. To propel the 25 kg (55 pounds) CubeSat to the moon, the Rocket Lab’s lunar photon – optimized specifically for lunar missions – will give the payload the extra thrust needed to take it to the moon.
Powered by green-hypergolic propellants, its Hypercurie onboard engine will place the CAPSTONE satellite in ballistic orbit to transfer to the moon. Unlike the free return trajectory used during Apollo’s lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s, this economical ballistic lunar transfer makes it possible to deploy CAPSTONE in such a distant orbit with the help of a small launch vehicle.
Once near the Moon, the CAPSTONE satellite will use its onboard propulsion systems to place itself in an almost rectilinear orbit around the Moon.
CAPSTONE Payload
CAPSTONE is a CubeSat developed by Terran Orbital Corporation and managed by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program within the agency’s space technology mission directorate.
This is the first launched mission that directly supports NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to bring people back to the moon and advance humanity on its way to Mars. As such, CAPSTONE will be the first spacecraft to enter an almost rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the moon.
The orbits of the moon can look unstable, depending on where you look from. This is Halo Orbit used this weekend by CAPSTONE at @RocketLab pic.twitter.com/YB92q73y2E
– Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) June 25, 2022
NRHO is a one-week, highly eccentric orbit that operates with a balancing point in the gravity of the Earth and the Moon. This makes the orbit ideal for manned missions aboard the Gateway space station, NASA’s Orion spacecraft and / or the SpaceX lunar version of the Starship, as it provides crews with routine access to the polar moon’s landing sites, which are the goals of the program. Artemis.
In addition to surface access and fuel efficiency, NRHO will allow scientists to take advantage of the deep space environment for radiation experiments to gain a better understanding of the potential effects of space time on humans and instruments. Most importantly, the NRHO’s trajectory also has a continuous line of sight or “view” of the Earth, leading to continuous communication between the spacecraft and the home.
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This is different from Apollo’s missions, which periodically lost communication with Earth as they passed behind the moon.
NRHO’s orbit will also bring CAPSTONE within 1,600 kilometers of one near-lunar pole and 70,000 kilometers from the other pole at its peak every seven days, requiring fewer propulsion capabilities for spacecraft flying to and from from the surface of the moon than other orbits would allow.
CAPSTONE is planned to stay in this orbit for at least six months to characterize the properties of this unique orbit.
The satellite will also confirm the power and propulsion requirements to maintain this orbit, as envisaged by NASA models, thus reducing logistical uncertainty for Orion and Starship operations. CAPSTONE will also demonstrate the reliability of spacecraft-to-space navigation systems, as well as its communication capabilities with Earth, something that will be widely used during Artemis’ missions with Orion and Starship Human Landing System (HLS) crews. ).
CAPSTONE will achieve these goals by using its onboard flight payload computer and radio to perform calculations to determine its position in orbit. This will be done using data taken from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as a reference point.
The CAPSTONE payload in the Rocket Lab integration facility in the LC-1. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
This peer-to-peer navigation system is called the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, developed by the owner and main operator of the mission: Advanced Space.
This technology will be used to evaluate CAPSTONE’s stand-alone navigation software. If successful, this software will allow future spacecraft to determine their location without having to rely solely on Earth tracking.
Overall, these are some of the six objectives of CAPSTONE’s mission:
- verification of the characteristics of a cis-lunar orbit with a nearly rectilinear halo
- demonstrates entering and maintaining this unique orbit
- lay the foundations for trade support for future lunar operations
- demonstrates navigation from a spaceship to a spaceship
- Demonstrates one-way range technique using deep space network signals and a chip-scale atomic clock
- Gain experience with small, specialized CubeSats launches beyond low Earth orbit, to the moon and beyond.
Start the timeline
Final preparation for take-off will begin six hours before take-off by closing the road to the launch site. At T-4 hours the Electron will be raised in a vertical position. After checking the connection on the site, the rocket will be loaded with kerosene RP-1, as liquid oxygen will flow to the rocket at T-2 hours, while activating safety zones for the sea area around the launch site.
What happens in Launch Complex 1 and Mission Control as we count to the start? Here’s a look at what our team did in the hours before takeoff! #CAPSTONE pic.twitter.com/nluKRK3viO
– Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) June 28, 2022
At T-30 minutes, the closure of the airspace will take effect for launch. This will be followed at T-18 minutes later by the GO / NO GO survey.
Starting from this point, the next big event will take place in T-2 minutes, when the automatic start sequence starts and Electron’s on-board computers take control of the countdown.
At T-2 seconds, Electron’s 9 Rutherford engines will ignite and increase to full thrust while engine condition checks are performed before the vehicle is released for T0 flight.
The electron will then orbit and roll in an easterly trajectory to achieve the required initial low Earth orbit for the mission. At T + 2 minutes 41 seconds, the motors of the first stage will be switched off, followed by the separation of the stages. At T + 2 minutes 51 seconds, the second stage of Electron’s vacuum-optimized Rutherford engine will start, with the fairings splitting only 27 seconds later.
At T + 6 minutes and 36 seconds, the original set of batteries in the second stage will be deleted and will “hot swap” with unused batteries on stage. At this time, exhausted batteries (batteries A and B) will be discarded to reduce the mass of the stage as it continues to ascend into orbit.
At T + 9 minutes, Electron is expected to reach a low orbit of 165 kilometers. Over the next five days, Photon’s HyperCurie engine will perform a series of orbiting maneuvers from that initial parking orbit approximately once every 24 hours.
The Lunar Photon spacecraft before the integration of the CAPSTONE payload. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
The photon will perform burns every day to increase the speed of the stage and increase the eccentricity of the orbit as it continues on its way to the moon. On the sixth day, the HyperCurie will burn for the last time, accelerating the payload to 39,500 kilometers per hour and in a translucent injection trajectory that will take CAPSTONE from Earth to the moon.
Twenty minutes after the last Photon burn, CAPSTONE will be released from the Photon satellite bus.
Commanded by teams at the Advanced Space Mission Operations Center, CAPSTONE will perform a series of planned trajectory correction maneuvers using its onboard low-energy propulsion systems.
In all, the final photon combustion will send CAPSTONE 1.3 million kilometers from Earth, more than three times the distance to the Moon, before the gravity of the Earth-Moon system pulls it back to the Moon.
CAPSTONE will arrive at its NRHO on the moon four months after the launch.
(Main photo: Electron completes a dress rehearsal for a wet dress before the release of CAPSTONE. Credit: Rocket Lab)
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