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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.