New Zealand is showing off its role in plans to return humans to the Moon, saying it will take part in NASA’s Capstone mission, which will test orbit for a lunar space station.
New Zealand is showing off its role in plans to return humans to the Moon, saying it will take part in NASA’s Capstone mission, which will test orbit for a lunar space station.
Rocket Lab has announced it will launch a satellite from Mahia, New Zealand, to test lunar orbit for Gateway, a lunar orbiting outpost planned to provide astronauts with access to the surface. Moon face. Separately, the New Zealand government on Monday said it had signed an agreement with NASA to conduct new research aimed at tracking spacecraft approaching and orbiting the Moon.
“New Zealand’s space region will be the star of NASA’s Capstone Moon mission,” said Andrew Johnson, manager of the New Zealand Space Agency. Launching into lunar orbit from New Zealand is “an important milestone”, while the new study “will become increasingly important as more countries and private organizations send spacecraft to the Moon,” he said. speak.
NASA’s Artemis program plans to return humans to the lunar surface as early as 2025, renewing human exploration of the Moon and moving toward the exploration of Mars. It plans to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and explore more of the Moon’s surface than ever before.
Rocket Lab says it could launch the CubeSat satellite as early as Tuesday, with the launch window open through July 27.
The announcement comes a day after NASA test-fired the first of three locating rockets from a facility in Australia’s Northern Territory, the first time the space agency has used an external commercial launch pad. outside the United States in its more than 50-year history.
The three rocket launches will take place from 26 June to 12 July from Arnhem Space Centre, a site privately owned and operated by Equatorial Launch Australia.
Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency, told Bloomberg Television on Monday: “Space is really going through a renaissance. “We have seen entities like SpaceX rapidly reduce the cost of putting technology in space. The barriers to doing jobs in space are thus much lower. “
New Zealand’s agreement with NASA will see a research team led by the University of Canterbury, including contributors from the University of Auckland and the University of New South Wales in Australia, attempt to track the spacecraft from radio stations. observed at Tekapo and Canberra.
The scientists intend to validate their observations and algorithms to predict the orbits of spacecraft going to the Moon and within their Moon orbit based on NASA’s Capstone mission data.
