The tiny satellite, called CubeSat, is about the size of a microwave oven and weighs just 55 pounds (25 kilograms), but will be the first to try a unique, elliptical lunar orbit. CubeSat will act as a tracker for the Gateway, a lunar outpost in orbit that will serve as a stopover between Earth and the Moon for astronauts. The orbit, called an almost straight halo trajectory, is very elongated and provides stability for long-term missions while requiring little energy to maintain – exactly what the Gateway will need. The orbit exists at a balanced point in the gravity of the moon and the earth. The mission, called the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, and known as CAPSTONE, took off from the launch site on Tuesday at 5:55 a.m. ET. The CubeSat was launched with Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. It will reach orbit within three months and then spend the next six months in orbit. The spacecraft can provide more data on power and propulsion requirements for the Gateway. The CubeSat will orbit the spacecraft 1,000 miles (1,609.3 kilometers) from one lunar pole to its nearest passage and within 43,500 miles (70,006.5 kilometers) from the other pole every seven days. Using this orbit will be more energy efficient for spaceships flying to and from the Gateway, as it requires less propulsion than more circular orbits. The tiny spacecraft will also be used to test its ability to communicate with Earth from this orbit, which has the advantage of clear Earth views while providing cover for the lunar south pole – where its first astronauts are expected to land. Artemis in 2025. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbit, which has been orbiting the moon for 13 years, will be a reference point for CAPSTONE. The two spacecraft will communicate directly with each other, allowing teams on the ground to measure the distance between each other and the house at the exact location of CAPSTONE. The collaboration between the two spacecraft can test CAPSTONE’s autonomous navigation software, called CAPS or the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System. If this software works as expected, it could be used by future spacecraft without relying on Earth tracking. “The CAPSTONE mission is a valuable precursor not only to the Gateway, but also to the Orion spacecraft and the Human Landing System,” said Nujoud Merancy, head of NASA’s Exploration Mission Planning Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Gateway and Orion will use the data from CAPSTONE to validate our model, which will be important for business and planning for future shipments.”
SMALL SATELLITES IN LARGE MISSION
The CAPSTONE mission is a fast, low-cost demonstration designed to help lay the groundwork for future small spacecraft, said Christopher Baker, director of the small spacecraft technology program at NASA’s Space Technology Mission. Small missions that can be combined and launched quickly at a lower cost mean that they can take chances that they can not make larger, more expensive missions. “So often in a flight test, you learn so much, if not more, from failure than from success. “We can afford to take more risk, knowing that there is a possibility of failure, but that we can accept that failure in order to move forward with advanced capabilities,” Baker said. “In this case, failure is an option.” Lesser CubeSat missions can update larger missions on the line – and CubeSats have already embarked on more demanding low-Earth orbital destinations. When NASA’s InSight podium was on its nearly seven-month journey to Mars in 2018, he was not alone. Two suitcase-sized spaceships, called MarCOs, followed InSight on its voyage. They were the first cubic satellites to fly into deep space. Upon entering, landing and landing in InSight, MarCO satellites received and transmitted communication from the podium to inform NASA that InSight was safely on the red planet. They were nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, for the robots from the 2008 Pixar movie. The fact that the tiny satellites reached Mars, flying behind InSight in space, excited the engineers. The CubeSats continued to fly over Mars after the InSight landed, but remained silent until the end of the year. But MarCO was a great test of how CubeSats can participate in larger missions. These tiny but powerful spaceships will once again play a supporting role in September, when the DART mission, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, deliberately crashes into the moon Dimorpho as it orbits the asteroid Gemini near Earth to change its motion. asteroid in space. The collision will be recorded by LICIACube, or Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids, an accompanying cube satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency. The CubeSat portfolio size travels to DART, which was released in November 2021 and will be developed by it before the collision so that it can record what is happening. Three minutes after the collision, the CubeSat will fly next to Dimorphos to take pictures and videos. The video of the collision will be broadcast on Earth. The Artemis I mission will also carry three CubeSat-sized cereal boxes that travel deep space. Separately, tiny satellites will measure hydrogen at the Moon’s south pole and map lunar water deposits, make a lunar flight and study particles and magnetic fields flowing from the sun.
MOST ACCESSIBLE MISSIONS
The CAPSTONE mission is based on NASA’s partnership with commercial companies such as Rocket Lab, Stellar Exploration, Terran Orbital Corporation and Advanced Space. The lunar mission was built using an innovative fixed-price small business research contract – in less than three years and for less than $ 30 million. Larger shipments can cost billions of dollars. The Rover Perseverance, currently exploring Mars, cost more than $ 2 billion and the Artemis I mission is estimated to cost $ 4.1 billion, according to an audit by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General. Such contracts can expand opportunities for smaller, more affordable missions to the Moon and other destinations, while creating a framework for commercial support for future lunar operations, Baker said. Baker’s hope is that small spacecraft missions can accelerate the pace of space exploration and scientific discovery – and CAPSTONE and other CubeSat are just the beginning.
