NASA Loses Contact With Just-Launched Spacecraft Headed Toward Moon
NASA has encountered "communication issues" and is attempting to "re-establish contact" with its Moon-bound CAPSTONE satellite, which successfully broke free of Earth's orbit on Monday after launching atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket.
Though more info is needed, it's a serious problem that could jeopardize the entire mission.
[ . . . . ] Fortunately, not all is lost. The CAPSTONE team has "good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network," according to the update, meaning that scientists will at least know where to look in their attempts to regain communication with the spacecraft.
The spacecraft also has the ability to delay its "trajectory correction maneuver" towards the Moon according to NASA, buying the team "several days" of time.
NASA loses contact with moon-bound CAPSTONE spacecraft
Flight controllers have lost contact with a small pathfinder spacecraft launched last week to test an unusual lunar orbit planned for NASA's Artemis moon program, the agency said Tuesday. Engineers are troubleshooting and attempting to re-establish communications.
Launched last Tuesday from New Zealand atop a Rocketlab Electron rocket, the CAPSTONE spacecraft relied on a compact-but-sophisticated upper stage for thruster firings to repeatedly "pump up" the high point of an increasingly elliptical orbit to the point where it could break free of Earth's gravity and head for the moon.
Those maneuvers went well and CAPSTONE was released from Rocketlab's Photon upper stage early Monday to fly on its own. NASA confirmed successful solar array deployment and an initial communications session. But a second session apparently was cut short for some reason and flight controllers lost contact.
Related Stories
NASA Restores Contact With CAPSTONE Spacecraft – Prepares for Trajectory Correction Maneuver:
The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, is a CubeSat that will fly a unique orbit around the Moon intended for NASA's future Artemis lunar outpost Gateway. Its six-month mission will help launch a new era of deep space exploration. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center
Mission crews for NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) have re-established contact with the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network after experiencing communications problems.
Data downloaded from CAPSTONE indicate that the spacecraft is in good health and that it operated safely on its own when it was not in communication with Earth. Teams are preparing to perform CAPSTONE's first trajectory adjustment maneuver as early as 11:30 a.m. EDT (8:30 a.m. PDT) on July 7. It will more accurately target CAPSTONE's transfer orbit to the Moon. CAPSTONE is still on schedule to arrive in lunar orbit on November 13, as originally planned.
See Yesterday's story: NASA Loses Contact With Just-Launched Spacecraft Headed Toward Moon
[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday July 06 2022, @09:24PM (1 child)
A couple hours ago I noticed this news . . . after this article was in the queue for the front page.
CAPSTONE Update: Communications Re-Established [nasa.gov]
NASA reestablishes contact with a satellite after losing connection when it left Earth's orbit [cnn.com]
NASA reestablishes contact with a satellite after losing connection when it left Earth's orbit [news-daily.com]
Contact lost.
Contact reestablished.
Milton wrote Paradise Lost.
Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 06 2022, @11:27PM
Defense forces for the Intergalactic Council warned once again that the 3rd planet of Sol, currently safely quarantined, continues to send out its robots, forcing them to retreat from their observation posts on that planet's moon. They've also been forced to do some pretty creative work to avoid detection on Mars, although they did succeed in shooting down several craft.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:47AM (4 children)
You know that feeling when you are connected to a remote server and you bring down the wrong interface (or any of the hundred variations on that theme) and you know that nothing short of a reboot will get you out that pickle?
What I'd love to know is how "spacecraft admins" even begin to solve this kind of trouble. You can't yell at it, the boss can yell at you but that won't help. You can't bring Hugh Jackman to your nightclub and get him to break the 1025-bit encryption (Swordfish-style), nor will a ten-year-old girl be able to say "that's Unix" and zoom around on a graphical interface (Jurassic Park) and fix the problem. It's dead, Jim. Where would you even begin to get your spaceship back?
In truth, I likely already know the answer - they will have built a deadman's switch into the system that does some kind of reset unless it hears from mission control on schedule. (Good thinking, people.) I do rather wish they would report "we are waiting to see if the spacecraft resets and we can re-establish contact" - because the success of these missions is predicated by exhaustive planning, not by a bunch of pointy-head types yelling "science harder!" at the eleventh hour. I'd like to see a lot more respect for those who plan redundancy measures and consequently "save the day" because an automatic fail-safe kicks in and seamlessly fixes the problem.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 07 2022, @03:21AM
That makes my finger twitch over the redundant mod, lol!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday July 07 2022, @03:49AM
IIRC they use watchdog timers [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday July 07 2022, @04:04AM
Just a side note, the Jurassic Park visual file system navigator was a real thing [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Thursday July 07 2022, @10:58AM
Reminds me of the documentary: The Farthest
https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/ [pbs.org]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @03:04AM (1 child)
Wake me up when Elon Musk is mining tritium on Mercury. NASA is so LAME.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 07 2022, @07:29PM
'lame' was a good mp3 encoder back in the day.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...