Posted on 09/12/2022 9:25:15 AM PDT by BenLurkin
CAPSTONE entered into safe mode during the evening of Thursday, September 8, just as the probe was completing a trajectory correction maneuver. CAPSTONE’s mission team “has good knowledge of the state and status of the spacecraft,” NASA said in a painfully brief statement. “The mission operations team is in contact with the spacecraft and working towards a solution with support from the Deep Space Network. Additional updates will be provided as available.” No further updates have been provided since the statement was published on September 10.
CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, launched to space on June 28 aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The 55-pound (25-pound) cubesat is on a pathfinder mission for NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to build a sustained human presence at and around the Moon.
Once at the Moon, the NASA-funded CAPSTONE will enter into a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO)—a fuel-efficient orbit that takes advantage of neutral gravity points produced by the Earth and Moon. It’s within this gravitationally stable orbit that NASA and its partners are planning to build a lunar space station called Gateway. CAPSTONE, built and designed by Terran Orbital, will serve as an advanced scout to confirm theoretical models about this unique halo orbit.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Turn off ‘Automatic Updates’ so that you can wait and get the real one after all the bugs are discovered..............
HARD REBOOT!!
ctl-alt-del
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