The first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon has successfully arrived - Ars Technica

Enlarge / The CAPSTONE payload is seen here, atop an Electron rocket successful New Zealand.

Rocket Lab

After a travel of astir 5 months, taking it acold beyond the Moon and back, the small CAPSTONE spacecraft has successfully entered into lunar orbit.

"We received confirmation that CAPSTONE arrived successful near-rectilinear halo orbit, and that is simply a huge, immense measurement for the agency," said NASA's main of exploration systems development, Jim Free, connected Sunday evening. "It conscionable completed its archetypal insertion pain a fewer minutes ago. And implicit the adjacent fewer days they'll proceed to refine its orbit, and beryllium the archetypal cubesat to alert and run astatine the Moon."

This is an important orbit for NASA, and a peculiar one, due to the fact that it is truly stable, requiring conscionable a tiny magnitude of propellant to clasp position. At its closest constituent to the Moon, this astir week-long orbit passes wrong 3,000 km of the lunar surface, and astatine different points it is 70,000 km away. NASA plans to physique a tiny abstraction station, called the Lunar Gateway, present aboriginal this decade.

But earlier then, the bureau is starting small. CAPSTONE is simply a scrappy, commercialized ngo that was supported financially, successful part, by a $13.7 cardinal assistance from NASA. Developed by a Colorado-based institution named Advanced Space, with assistance from Terran Orbital, the spacecraft itself is modestly sized, conscionable a 12U cubesat with a wide of astir 25 kg. It could acceptable comfortably wrong a mini-refrigerator.

The spacecraft launched astatine the extremity of June connected an Electron rocket from New Zealand. Electron is the smallest rocket to motorboat a payload to the Moon, and its manufacturer, Rocket Lab, stressed the capabilities of the booster and its Photon precocious signifier to the maximum to nonstop CAPSTONE connected its agelong travel to the Moon. This was Rocket Lab's archetypal heavy abstraction mission.

After separating from its rocket, the spacecraft spent astir 5 months traveling to the Moon, pursuing what's known arsenic a ballistic lunar transportation that uses the Sun's gravity to travel an expansive trajectory. Along the way, formation controllers managed to solve a spinning issue that different could person led to nonaccomplishment of the spacecraft. This was a roundabout path, bringing the spacecraft to a region of much than 3 times that betwixt the Earth and Moon earlier arcing back, but required comparatively small propellant to scope its destination.

For example, the pain executed by CAPSTONE connected Sunday evening to modulation into a near-rectilinear halo orbit was highly tiny. According to Advanced Space, the conveyance burned its thruster for 16 minutes astatine astir 0.44 Newtons, which is equivalent to the value of astir 9 pieces of modular printer paper.

CAPSTONE volition not lone service arsenic a pathfinder successful this caller orbit—verifying the theoretical properties modeled by NASA engineers—it volition besides show a caller strategy of autonomous navigation astir and adjacent the Moon. This Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, oregon CAPS, is important due to the fact that determination is simply a deficiency of fixed tracking assets adjacent the Moon, particularly arsenic the cislunar situation becomes much crowded during the coming decade.

The ngo is planned to run for astatine slightest six months successful this orbit.