NASA probe back on track to reach moon after monthlong mishap in space

Space Daily

3 years ago

NASA’s CAPSTONE CubeSat space probe is back on track to reach the moon later this month after a glitch during engine maneuvers in September caused the craft to spin out of control.

A separate engine burn last week proved successful and set the craft’s trajectory to arrive in the moon’s orbit on Nov. 13, less than two weeks from now, the agency announced Monday amid a flurry of test missions that set the stage for U.S. astronauts to return to the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years.

The 55-pound probe, which looks like a microwave oven, was disabled for several weeks after a faulty engine burn sent it careening into outer space on Sept. 8.

Back on Earth, mission control worked feverishly to identify and resolve the issue, but it took the team until early October to fix the propulsion system and stabilize the orbiter.

Now a month after the mishap, the probe appears to be functioning normally again.

Thursday’s engine burn occurred beyond the moon — more than 308,000 miles from Earth, and lasted nearly 4 minutes without a hitch, according to Advanced Space, the private Colorado-based company that built CAPSTONE for the nation’s space agency.

The moon orbits the Earth at a distance of 239,000 miles, so CAPSTONE will need to fire its engines two more times to get back to the moon and enter what’s known as a highly elliptical near rectilinear halo orbit or NRHO.

CAPSTONE will determine and verify the safety of the orbit of Gateway, a future pint-sized space station that NASA plans to float around the moon as part of the Artemis program.

CAPSTONE is an acronym for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment.

The mission, which launched back on June 28, seemed snake-bitten from the outset.

Ground control first lost contact with the probe after it accidentally jettisoned a supplementary crew ship early in the mission, but technicians quickly fixed a coding command that had been formatted improperly.

The mission will last at least six months, with the probe laying the path for Gateway and also conducting navigation and communication experiments in conjunction with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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CAPSTONE completes successful maneuver, teeing up Lunar orbit

Washington DC (SPX) Nov 01, 2022

The CAPSTONE spacecraft successfully completed a trajectory correction maneuver on Thursday, Oct. 27, teeing up the spacecraft’s arrival to lunar orbit on Nov. 13.

CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode following an issue in early September that caused the spacecraft to spin. The team identified the most likely cause as a valve-related issue in one of the spacecraft’s eight thrusters.

The mission team will design future maneuvers to work around the affected valve, including the two remaining tra … read more