At the beginning of 2022, a series of moon launches by space agencies and private companies appear to have been carried out. So far, none of them have escaped the launch pad.
But on Tuesday, the year’s first moon photo, CAPSTONE, is scheduled to take off. The small spacecraft is funded by NASA but operated mainly by private companies. Here’s what you need to know about CAPSTONE.
When is it coming out and how can I watch it?
Scope of the premiere will begin at 5 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday on NASA Television. Or you can watch it in the video player embedded above. The rocket must launch at a precise time, 5:55 a.m., for the spacecraft to be delivered to the correct orbit.
If weather or technical problems cause the rocket to miss that moment, there will be additional opportunities each day through July 27. But about 50 minutes before the scheduled mission start time, the weather at the yard launched in New Zealand showed little chance of a growl. the elevator is off.
Why did NASA launch CAPSTONE?
The full name of the mission is Testing Cislunar Autonomous Navigation Technology and Operations. It will act as a scout for a specific lunar orbit, where a crewed space station will eventually be built as part of Artemis, NASA’s program to return astronauts. lunar surface.
The outpost that NASA wants to build, Gateway, will serve as a stopover where future crews will stop before continuing on to the moon. NASA has decided that the best location for this outpost is in what is known as a sublinear halo orbit.
Halo orbits are gravitationally influenced orbits of two objects – in this case, the Earth and the moon. The influence of the two bodies makes the orbit highly stable, minimizing the amount of propellant needed to keep a spacecraft orbiting the moon.
Gravitational interactions also keep the orbit at a 90-degree angle to the line of sight from Earth. (This is the sublinear part of the name.) So a spacecraft in this orbit would never pass behind the moon, where communication would be cut off.
The orbit that Gateway will travel will be within about 2,200 miles of the moon’s North Pole and around 44,000 miles away as it crosses the South Pole. A trip around the moon would take about a week.
No spacecraft has ever traveled in this orbit. Therefore, CAPSTONE will provide data to NASA to validate their mathematical models for operating the Gateway outpost in a sublinear halo orbit.
Which companies are running CAPSTONE?
NASA did not design or build the CAPSTONE, nor will it operate it. The spacecraft belongs to and will be managed by Advanced Space, a 45-employee company just outside of Denver. Advanced Space actually purchased the 55-pound microwave-sized satellite from another company, Terran Orbital.
It was also not launched by SpaceX or any of the other major NASA aerospace contractors, but by Rocket Lab, a US-New Zealand company it’s the company that’s at the forefront of delivering small payloads to orbit. The company has its own launch pad on New Zealand’s North Island for its Electron rockets.
NASA spent about $20 million on Advanced Space to build and operate the spacecraft and just under $10 million on Rocket Lab’s launch pad.
What will happen in the mission?
After launch and reaching Earth orbit, CAPSTONE will detach from the rocket and begin a slow, but effective orbit to the moon, arriving on November 13. The mission will last six months, likely to be completed. extended for another year.
When CAPSTONE arrives on the moon, its main mission is to discover the best way to stay in the desired orbit. By measuring the time it takes for radio signals to travel back and forth to Earth, the spacecraft will determine its position, then move on its own if it deviates.
This may take some trial and error as no spacecraft has ever passed this orbit before, and without a global positioning system on the moon, the uncertainty about the spacecraft’s position pillar at any given time is larger.
CAPSTONE will also test an alternative method of finding its position by working with other spacecraft orbiting the moon. Advanced Space has been developing this technology for over seven years, and it will now test the concept with CAPSTONE sending signals back and forth with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
