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NASA's Lunar Flashlight Won't Make It to its Planned Orbit

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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NASA's Lunar Flashlight won't make it to its planned orbit [digitaltrends.com]:

This week has seen good news for one NASA moon mission, as the CAPSTONE satellite recovered from a communications issue [digitaltrends.com], but bad news for another. The Lunar Flashlight mission, which is intended to search the south pole of the moon for water ice, now won’t make it to its planned orbit.

The Lunar Flashlight, a small type of satellite called a CubeSat, was launched in December last year but soon experienced problems on its journey. Three of its four thrusters were not working correctly [digitaltrends.com], making it hard for the satellite to perform the maneuvers necessary to enter its planned lunar orbit.

NASA explained in an update [nasa.gov] that the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Georgia Tech tried to address the issue by spinning the spacecraft and firing the one working thruster in 10-minute bursts, which they hoped would push the spacecraft in the required direction. But after several attempts that one thruster stopped working as well.

The spacecraft now almost certainly won’t make it to its planned near-rectilinear halo orbit. All is not completely lost, however. The team is working on a plan to salvage what they can from the mission by getting the satellite into a high Earth orbit, which would allow it to make flybys of the moon and give it the opportunity to collect data from the moon’s south pole.

The satellite only has limited fuel left after the attempts to get it into its original orbit, but the team will try to begin maneuvers this week which could allow it to make its first science pass of the moon in June.

NASA was philosophical in its announcement of the problem, pointing out that Lunar Flashlight was a technology demonstration with a new miniaturized propulsion system — meaning it was essentially a test of a new concept. “Technology demonstrations are high-risk, high-reward endeavors intended to push the frontiers of space technology,” the agency wrote in the announcement [nasa.gov]. “The lessons learned from these challenges will help to inform future missions that further advance this technology.”

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CAPSTONE Satellite Suffers Comms Issue, is Now Working Again

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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CAPSTONE satellite suffers comms issue, is now working again [digitaltrends.com]:

NASA’s CAPSTONE satellite, in an experimental orbit around the moon, has been experiencing communications problems but is now back and running as it should be. The small CubeSat was designed to test out an experimental fuel-efficient orbit around the moon to pave the way for future moon-based infrastructure.

CAPSTONE has experienced several problems on its way to the moon. Shortly after its launch in July 2022, NASA lost contact with the satellite due to a problem with the radio system, but contact was reestablished [digitaltrends.com] after a few days.

In September 2022 another error occurred, forcing the satellite to go into safe mode [digitaltrends.com]. This left the satellite spinning as it lost attitude control, which was a particular problem as it was unclear whether there would be enough power generated by its solar panels. In October, engineers sent recovery commands to the satellite and were able to get its spin under control [digitaltrends.com].

Despite these issues, CAPSTONE was able to make it to the moon and complete an orbit insertion maneuver [digitaltrends.com], bringing it into its near-rectilinear halo orbit in November 2022.

Since then, CAPSTONE has completed 12.5 orbits of the moon, which is well past its original objective of six orbits. This is important as it helps demonstrate the feasibility of this orbit for future missions like the planned Gateway lunar space station.

However, the satellite has been having more problems this year, with a communications issue beginning last month. Fortunately, that issue has now been fixed.

“Beginning Jan. 26, CAPSTONE was unable to receive commands from ground operators,” NASA wrote in an update [nasa.gov]. “The spacecraft remained overall healthy and on-course throughout the issue, sending telemetry data back to Earth. On Feb. 6, an automatic command-loss timer rebooted CAPSTONE, clearing the issue and restoring two-way communication between CAPSTONE and the ground.”

Now, the team is getting the satellite ready for its next job: testing out a navigation system called Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS. The idea is to use data from both CAPSTONE and another moon-orbiting spacecraft, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to identify the exact position of a satellite in space using an approach called cross-link. Another test will be of a new data type for sending data using an onboard atomic clock.

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