NASA announced Tuesday that it has lost contact with a $32.7 million spacecraft headed to the Moon to test a tilted lunar orbit, but the agency’s engineers hope they can fix the problem.
After one successful communication and a second partial one on Monday, the space agency said it could no longer communicate with the spacecraft, named Capstone. Engineers are trying to find the cause of the communications outage and are optimistic they can fix it, NASA spokeswoman Sarah Fraser said Tuesday.
The spacecraft, which launched from New Zealand on June 28, had spent nearly a week in Earth’s orbit and was successfully on its way to the moon when contact was lost, Frazier said.
The 55-pound satellite is about the size of a microwave oven and will be the first spacecraft to test this oval orbit, where NASA wants to set up its Gateway outpost. The portal would serve as a staging point for the astronauts before descending to the lunar surface.
The orbit balances the gravity of the Earth and the Moon and thus requires little maneuvering and thus fuel and allows the satellite—or a space station—to remain in constant contact with Earth.
NASA satellite breaks from Earth orbit, heads for the moon
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