NASA reported that they would be sending a miniature space shuttle, CAPSTONE, to space on June 28th. It will orbit around the moon, sending data to discover information toward ice in the moon’s polar ice caps.
53 years since the Apollo missions, NASA has refocused its goal to the moon by introducing the Artemis programs, a set of missions that will run experiments on the moon to find evidence leading to past or existing water on the surface. One definite stepping stone for this goal is NASA’s new space probe: a 55 pound spacecraft called CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment).
NASA signed a contract with Advanced Space in New Zealand, offering the company 20 million dollars to partner up. This mission is different from any other NASA mission because everything was done in New Zealand; the launching and building of the robot, for example. In fact, NASA does not actually own the probe, It belongs to Advanced Space
The goal with CAPSTONE is, in a 6-18 month mission, to test out a halo orbit path (an orbit path where two masses pull an object in different directions, resulting in a halo-like shape to be formed). One benefit of this would be to not lose any communications with the space shuttle. In earlier missions, when the probe went behind the moon, the signal would be lost for a short period of time. With the halo orbit, that scenario wouldn’t happen.
The shuttle has a clock chip inside of the robot to tell the difference between Earth’s time and its own. It can also help locate where the shuttle is at any given time. In addition, it can pose as a test for setting up a GPS system for other satellites in its vicinity, letting one another know where different spaceships, as well other space objects, are.
Dan Hartman, program manager for Gateway, stated that CAPSTONE would be a big help in mitigating danger in their next space probes. “Any time you can reduce error bars in your models is always a good thing.” He said that this first design would help create future spacecraft.
53 years since the Apollo missions, NASA has refocused its goal to the moon by introducing the Artemis programs, a set of missions that will run experiments on the moon to find evidence leading to past or existing water on the surface. One definite stepping stone for this goal is NASA’s new space probe: a 55 pound spacecraft called CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment).
NASA signed a contract with Advanced Space in New Zealand, offering the company 20 million dollars to partner up. This mission is different from any other NASA mission because everything was done in New Zealand; the launching and building of the robot, for example. In fact, NASA does not actually own the probe, It belongs to Advanced Space
The goal with CAPSTONE is, in a 6-18 month mission, to test out a halo orbit path (an orbit path where two masses pull an object in different directions, resulting in a halo-like shape to be formed). One benefit of this would be to not lose any communications with the space shuttle. In earlier missions, when the probe went behind the moon, the signal would be lost for a short period of time. With the halo orbit, that scenario wouldn’t happen.
The shuttle has a clock chip inside of the robot to tell the difference between Earth’s time and its own. It can also help locate where the shuttle is at any given time. In addition, it can pose as a test for setting up a GPS system for other satellites in its vicinity, letting one another know where different spaceships, as well other space objects, are.
Dan Hartman, program manager for Gateway, stated that CAPSTONE would be a big help in mitigating danger in their next space probes. “Any time you can reduce error bars in your models is always a good thing.” He said that this first design would help create future spacecraft.
