NASA Selects 18 Research CubeSats as Secondary Payloads; Rocket Lab Will Send CubeSat to Lunar Orbit
takyon writes:
NASA Announces Next Round of Candidates for CubeSat Space Missions
NASA has selected 18 small research satellites from 11 states to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets launching in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The selected CubeSats were proposed by educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and NASA centers in response to NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) call for proposals issued in August 2019.
Separately, a CubeSat will be launched by Rocket Lab to test the proposed orbit for the Lunar Gateway (no longer known as "LOP-G"):
A Rocket Lab Electron will launch the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) satellite from the company's Launch Complex 2 site at Wallops Island, Virginia, in early 2021. The contract for the dedicated launch is valued at $9.95 million.
CAPSTONE, a 25-kilogram satellite being built by Colorado-based Advanced Space under a $13.7 million contract awarded in September, will go into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon, the same orbit proposed for the lunar Gateway. CAPSTONE will demonstrate the stability of that orbit, which has never been used by a spacecraft before, to support planning for the Gateway.
[...] Rocket Lab will use Photon, the satellite bus it is developing based on the Electron rocket's kick stage, to place CAPSTONE on a trajectory to the moon. CAPSTONE will use its own propulsion system to enter orbit around the moon and maneuver into that near-rectilinear halo orbit, a process that will take three months.
In a company statement, Rocket Lab Chief Executive Peter Beck emphasized the flexibility a dedicated launch offered over flying the spacecraft as a secondary payload on a larger vehicle. "As a dedicated mission on Electron, we're able to provide NASA with complete control over every aspect of launch and mission design for CAPSTONE, something typically only available to much larger spacecraft on larger launch vehicles," he said.
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