The 55-pound (25 kg) CAPSTON went dark on Monday (July 4), shortly after the split from Rocket Lab Photon space shuttle and headed for the moon. The mission team immediately began troubleshooting and their efforts have already been rewarded. “We have reestablished communications with CAPSTONE. The spacecraft appears happy and healthy. More details to come,” Colorado-based Advanced Space, which is running the mission for NASA, said. he said today via Twitter (opens in new tab) (July 6). CAPSTONE launched into Earth orbit atop a Rocket Lab electron booster on June 28, then spent a week spiraling further and further away from our planet through occasional photon engine burns. The latest photon launch, on Monday, provided enough of a kick to send the CAPSTONE on its way the moonand the cubesat separated from the spacecraft shuttle shortly thereafter. CAPSTONE then hit several other major milestones in quick succession. the microwave-oven-sized craft deployed its solar arrays as planned, for example, and began preparing its onboard propulsion system for its first engine burn, NASA officials he said in yesterday’s briefing (opens in new tab) (July 5). CAPSTONE contacted the mission team twice through NASA Deep Space Network shortly after the breakup, but then went dark, for reasons that remain a mystery. The loss of contact forced the CAPSTONE team to delay the first burn of the cubesat’s orbit correction engine, which was scheduled for yesterday. But that shouldn’t be a big deal. the spacecraft has enough fuel to handle a delay of “several days” in that initial burn, NASA officials he said in another update yesterday (opens in a new tab). CAPSTONE is on its way to a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the moon, a highly elliptical path that NASA has chosen for the Gateway space station. No spacecraft has ever captured a lunar NRHO, and CAPSTONE is tasked with verifying its stability for Gateway, a key part of NASA’s Artemis program of moon exploration. It will take some time for CAPSTONE (short for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment”) to reach its destination. Because it was launched on the 58-foot-tall (19-meter) Electron—a rocket designed to launch small satellites into Earth orbit—the cubesat follows a long, circuitous and highly efficient path to the moon. If all goes according to plan, CAPSTONE will enter her NRHO on November 13th. Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or enabled Facebook (opens in a new tab).
