Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle and Photon space shuttle put CAPSTONE on a long but fuel-efficient trajectory that took the spacecraft into deep space, well beyond the moon. CAPSTONE reached a distance of more than 950,000 miles (1.53 million kilometers) from Earth on Aug. 26 before gravity pulled the spacecraft onto a course that crossed the moon’s orbit for the Nov. 13 orbital insertion.
The CAPSTONE mission is a technology demonstration and a precursor to collecting data for future NASA crew missions to the moon. The small satellite successfully left Earth June 28 aboard a Rocket Lab launch vehicle and began a four-and-a-half-month journey that will culminate Nov. 13 in a planned maneuver to enter halo orbit around the moon.
More than halfway through its transit to the moon, CAPSTONE fired its miniature hydrazine propulsion system for a course correction maneuver on Sept. 8. However, according to NASA, a problem occurred during or shortly after ignition that caused the spacecraft to tumble. CAPSTONE’s reaction wheels, fast-spinning devices used to control the spacecraft’s orientation, were unable to compensate for the tumbling.
The spacecraft, which is about the size of a microwave oven, did not report to flight controllers after the course correction, giving ground teams the first indication that the mission was in trouble, according to Advanced Space, a Colorado-based company that owns and operates the CAPSTONE mission on behalf of NASA. In a mission update Monday, Advanced Space said CAPSTONE was in a “dynamic operational situation.”
Advanced Space’s mission control team re-established communications with CAPSTONE about 24 hours later, and the spacecraft’s telemetry data showed it was tumbling, its on-board computer was resetting periodically and it was using more power than it was generating through its solar arrays, NASA said Monday in a statement.
Engineers from Terran Orbital, the manufacturer of the CAPSTONE spacecraft, and Stellar Exploration, the supplier of the propulsion system, are working with Advanced Space and NASA to salvage the mission.