(Updated) NASA's Moon-bound spacecraft enters safe mode; team working towards solution


Devdiscourse News Desk | California | Updated: 13-09-2022 07:21 IST | Created: 12-09-2022 06:53 IST
(Updated) NASA's Moon-bound spacecraft enters safe mode; team working towards solution
Image Credit: Twitter (@NASAAmes)

NASA said on Saturday that its Moon's bound spacecraft, Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), has entered safe mode and the mission operations team is working towards a solution with support from the Deep Space Network.

On Thursday, September 8, CAPSTONE executed a planned trajectory correction manoeuvre. The mission controllers have since obtained telemetry confirming that an issue put the spacecraft in safe mode near the end of the manoeuvre, the agency said.

CAPSTONE launched on June 28, 2022, aboard a Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. The oven-sized CubeSat reached apogee - the spacecraft's farthest point from Earth (at 1,531,949 km or 951,909 miles away) - late last month.

The mission is designed to test the dynamics of a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) by demonstrating how to enter into and operate in this special orbit. The spacecraft is owned by Advanced Space on behalf of NASA and operations are performed jointly by teams at Advanced Space and Terran Orbital.

Update 1

The mission owner and operators have provided an update on the CAPSTONE mission:

Using NASA's Deep Space Network, the combined mission team re-established contact with the spacecraft and quickly reconfigured its systems to stabilize the situation while recovery plans could be evaluated.

"CAPSTONE remains in safe mode and now is power positive, meaning that it is generating more power from the solar panels than the system is using. Navigation data collected after the issue began suggests the Sept. 8 trajectory correction manoeuvre was completed or nearly complete when the issue occurred. This means the spacecraft remains on the intended trajectory and on course to its near rectilinear halo orbit at the Moon," the mission operators said in a statement on Monday.

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