The NASA Capstone spacecraft was the first cubesat, which went to the lunar orbit , despite the navigation failure, due For which he briefly lost contact with the flight control center on the road.
Kubsat reached the lunar orbit on Sunday November 13 at 00:39 UTC, where he will spend the next 6 months, tracking an almost straightforward galo-orbit (NRHO) around the Moon, which has never been used before a spacecraft.
orbit nrho
According to NASA, Capstone is the first spacecraft that took the NRHO flight, and the first cubeset working on the moon. In the next 5 days, Capstone will perform 2 additional orbital maneuvers to clarify its orbit. After these maneuvers, the team will check whether Capstone remains on the way to NRHO.
NASA hopes that the orbit is stable enough to support Gateway – a floating lunar laboratory where astronauts will live and work, who will study the solar system deeper. They will also be able to land on the surface of the moon using the station of the station.
Gateway
station
NRHO gallopor-orbit should allow Gateway to turn around the moon every week, and it is located low enough to bring the avanthopost closer to the surface of the moon, where the astronauts will be easier to get to the south pole of the moon.
The station will also be constantly in the zone of direct visibility of the Earth, which means that the connection with the earth will be faster and more stable. Capstone is an inexpensive way to check whether a spacecraft occupying NRHO can fly around the moon with minimal energy costs.
After the accurate configuration of its orbit, the 27th kilogram cubsat will pass within 1000 miles (~ 1600 km) from one lunar pole in the position closest to the moon and 44,500 miles (~ 71 600 km) from the other pole every 7 days .
NASA explained that the navigation software uses the lunar reconnaissance orbital apparatus (Lro) as a guide and allows the space ship to maintain its position in space without relying on monitoring from the Earth.
In September, Capstone temporarily lost control of its orientation in space after performing the orbital maneuver on the way to the moon. Cubsat was in disrepair, constantly rebooting until the engineers turned off the satellite in safe mode and set new instructions to correct its telemetry.