A microwave oven-sized NASA spacecraft just arrived in the Moons orbit on Sunday night. This small craft has thus end up being the first cubesat to ever reach our planets natural satellite, and will help NASA much better comprehend how to position ships into its orbit.
Weighing in at just 55 pounds (25 kgs), the cubesat will be the very first ship to test out a distinct, elliptical lunar orbit, to see if it is a feasible parking spot for craft sent out to orbit around the moon. The CubeSat is the first craft released as part of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE).
Testing of the characteristics of this halo-shaped, near-Moon orbit serves to establish a reliable stepping stone for Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that becomes part of NASAs Artemis program.
Image credits NASA/ Daniel Rutter.
Small but daring
The orbit that CAPSTONE is on presently, a near-rectilinear halo orbit or NRHO, is the very same one that will be inhabited by Gateway, the Moon-orbiting spaceport station that NASA has planned as a base of operations of their Artemis objective. As such, a lot hangs on the efficiency of the tiny satellite
Now that it has actually finally come to NRHO, CAPSTONE will perform “two extra clean-up maneuvers to improve its orbit”, according to NASA. After this, ground control will examine the data to see whether it can stay on track on NRHO as prepared.
CAPSTONE completed its four-month journey Sunday afternoon, according to a NASA news release, by shooting its thrusters to enter the Moons orbit. While here, CAPSTONE will come within 1,000 miles of one lunar pole on its near pass and 43,500 miles from the other pole at its peak every seven days.
These experiments will be utilized to evaluate the performance of the autonomous navigation software that CAPSTONE carries, christened the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS). If successful, CAPS will allow future spacecraft to identify their own place independent of tracking from Earth, enabling us to release up important ground-based sensor capacity for clinical usage, instead of regular tracking of spacecraft.
Boiled down, CAPSTONE is the Moons very first satellite, performing a few of the key roles such gadgets deal with above our own world.
NASA prepares for the cubesat to interact directly with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will act as a reference point. Based upon its position, CAPSTONE will measure how far it is from the LRO and how quick the distances in between them alter– allowing it to compute its own position in area.
This elliptical orbit is being evaluated for viability as any craft that enters it must consume much less fuel to remain in orbit compared to a regular, circular orbit. Now that it remains in location, CAPSTONE will attempt to verify the power and propulsion requirements estimated by NASAs models, to lower uncertainties. It is also tasked with performing spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation services and interaction with Earth.