Engineers lose contact with CAPSTONE on its way to Moon
Shortly after the spacecraft was successfully deployed from its Proton upper stage on yesterday, engineers lost contact with the spacecraft as it headed towards the Moon.
“The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network,” NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in an emailed statement today (July 5).
“If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days,” Frazier added. “Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible.”
The spacecraft will not arrive in lunar orbit until November, but along the way it needs to do a number of course corrections. Thus, there is some time pressure to reestablishing communications. That task now falls with the private company Advanced Space, which won a contract to operate the spacecraft for NASA.
UPDATE: More details are provided by the operators of the spacecraft, Advanced Space press, here. Though they canceled a course correction burn today, they apparently have plenty of time to do it, since the probe is already on a course to reach lunar orbit. The burn was simply intended to increase the accuracy of the trajectory.
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Shortly after the spacecraft was successfully deployed from its Proton upper stage on yesterday, engineers lost contact with the spacecraft as it headed towards the Moon.
“The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network,” NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier wrote in an emailed statement today (July 5).
“If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days,” Frazier added. “Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible.”
The spacecraft will not arrive in lunar orbit until November, but along the way it needs to do a number of course corrections. Thus, there is some time pressure to reestablishing communications. That task now falls with the private company Advanced Space, which won a contract to operate the spacecraft for NASA.
UPDATE: More details are provided by the operators of the spacecraft, Advanced Space press, here. Though they canceled a course correction burn today, they apparently have plenty of time to do it, since the probe is already on a course to reach lunar orbit. The burn was simply intended to increase the accuracy of the trajectory.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Curious if this (or any) spacecraft has enough AI to do the course corrections and enter Lunar orbit. This would seem a reasonable fail-safe capability.
I doubt it. There is talk about a scheduled course correction that can be delayed a few days if needed. Sounds like they were planning some burns very soon.
The question is did they put a failsafe in the programming for failed comms. If no communication if x amount of hours, then perform actions that may restore comms.
Great-more cis-lunar trash to avoid. Toy size, so hard to track.
“Great-more cis-lunar trash to avoid. Toy size, so hard to track.”
Yeah, we’re going to have to have some tracking requirements for space-launched items. Something similar to aircraft transponders. We are in the time of cis-lunar environmental responsibility, which is great. Keeping our act clean in space is what living on a planet is supposed to teach.
Interestingly the Photon bus which nemains close to the PL still has enough propellant to get itself into Capstones intended near-rectilinear halo orbit.
Off topic…I remember The Dream Machines having a bullet atop a conical pile of powder-and it looked like a wing top. I wonder if a self eating rocket could be delta wing shaped-burning both more short and narrow-maybe airbreathing as the upper stage provides fuel for an ever-widening scramjet that dissolves upon vacuum. Launch from airport-no metal cans to fall on villages. Maybe I Love Zero X too much.
There is talk of Lunar Photon completing some of the tasks intended for Capstone if the latter cannot be recovered.
“[Bailey Morgan] confirmed it was possible that rocket lab’s lunar photon spacecraft could manoeuvre into the same lunar orbit that capstone has been aiming for.”
This from Gunter’s space page; “In this mission, the Lunar Photon acts both as an upper stage for the CAPSTONE and as an independent satellite bus carrying some instruments on its own. Reportedly Lunar Photon will perform a Lunar fly by taking some images by after deploying the CAPSTONE satellite.”
It would be so Peter Beck to take advantage of the opportunity to run his own Lunar mission, there seems no good reason for Lunar Photon, as a boost stage, to be equipped with solar cells – but it’s got solar cells.
Communication with Capstone has been reestablished.