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NASA miniature CAPSTONE probe has now reached lunar orbit

Shulou Source: shulou.com Published: 2023-11-24 11:47:47 09月28日 Update

CTOnews.com, November 14 (Xinhua)-- NASA announced the end of the historic mission of the CAPSTONE miniature probe to the moon. The 25-kilogram creature entered orbit around the moon at 7:39 EDT on Sunday, becoming the first cube satellite ever to reach Earth's neighbors.

NASA said that CAPSTONE (Technical Operation and Navigation experiment of the Earth-Moon Autonomous Positioning system) is now in a near-straight-line halo orbit (NRHO) around the moon, and the subsequent NASA's "Gateway" space station will also use this highly oval orbit around the moon.

CTOnews.com reported that the Capstone Cube Satellite was launched from New Zealand's Mahiya Peninsula and flew to the moon in July this year on an electronic rocket from the Rocket Lab. It is also an important part of the NASA astronaut mission to the moon.

CAPSTONE will also conduct a number of communications and navigation tests, some of which will be carried out jointly with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), which has been orbiting the moon since 2009.

The satellite is part of the Lunar Autonomous Positioning system Technical Operation and Navigation experiment (Capstone) to test the new orbit of the NASA Artemis mission to the moon.

According to reports, NASA plans to send a space station called Portal into the orbit as a transit station for the Artemis lunar landing program, so that astronauts can reach the moon and land on the lunar surface from the space station.

The mission is carried out by NASA in partnership with the California-based Rocket Lab and Colorado-based Advanced Space (Advanced Space), which owns and operates Capstone Cube satellites.

It is worth mentioning that CAPSTONE is not ready to start work, it still needs some fine-tuning.

"two minor corrections will be made this week to ensure that the spacecraft is confirmed in a complex lunar orbit," said a representative of Colorado Advanced Space Corporation (Advanced Space). The company owns CAPSTONE and operates cube satellites for NASA.