NASA’s Troubled Microwave Oven-Sized Spacecraft Finally Reached The Moon
mrpg writes:
A spacecraft no bigger than a microwave oven will become the first CubeSat to orbit the Moon:
At precisely 7:18 p.m. EST on Sunday, November 13, 2022 NASA's pathfinding Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) will begin a special kind of orbit of the Moon that NASA believes requires no fuel.
[...] It's been a difficult journey for the tiny spacecraft since its launch from New Zealand atop a RocketLab Electron rocket on June 28, 2022.
Propelled towards the Moon at 24,500 mph/39,500 km/h, it began spinning in early September after valve issues and was put into safe mode. However, the spacecraft is now stable.
It's up there to pave the way for NASA's planned a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a space station in lunar orbit with a habitat module and a port for docking NASA's Orion spacecraft-due to launch for the first time on the Artemis I test flight this week.
[...] CAPSTONE will explore a near-rectilinear halo orbit that will see it reach an altitude of 958,000 miles from Earth-more than three times the distance between Earth and the Moon-before being pulled back towards it.
An elongated elliptical oval-shaped orbit at a precise balance point between the gravities of Earth and the Moon, the strange orbit will bring CAPSTONE 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.
Brief NASA pre-launch video about the CAPSTONE mission
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