The team is also preparing to detumble the spacecraft in an effort to regain control over its orientation. In addition to diagnosing the cause of the anomaly, the team needs to resolve unspecified temperature issues with several subsystems, including the propulsion system.
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The recovery team will make a decision on how to move forward in the coming days. Importantly, the probe successfully completed its third trajectory correction manoeuvre, which means it’s still on course to its special halo orbit around the Moon. The cubesat is currently spinning in such a way that its solar panels are being partially illuminated, resulting in weak transmissions from its low gain antennas. It’s still tumbling and in safe mode, but it’s now generating more power than it’s using. The good news is that CAPSTONE has been placed in a stable state. That said, the teams are still being hampered by incomplete information. Without the Deep Space Network, the team “would have little or no information on the status of the spacecraft,” according to Advanced Space. A recovery team made up of experts from NASA, Advanced Space, Terran Orbital (the designer and manufacturer of CAPSTONE), and Stellar Exploration (the provider of CAPSTONE’s propulsion system) is currently evaluating next steps. “Rapid response enabled by the Deep Space Network support and quick thinking by the team at Terran Orbital allowed mission operators to quickly reconfigure the operational state of the spacecraft to stabilise the situation while recovery plans could be further evaluated,” according to an Advanced Space update. Mercifully, controllers managed to stabilise the spacecraft by employing NASA’s Deep Space Network, an array of giant radio antennas used to support interplanetary spacecraft missions. When contact was finally re-established some 24 hours later, “mission controllers found that the spacecraft was tumbling, the onboard computer systems were periodically resetting, and the spacecraft was using more power than it was generating from its solar panels,” NASA explained. CAPSTONE reached apogee - its farthest point from Earth - on August 26, at a distance of 951,908 miles (1.53 million kilometers) from our planet.Īfter the latest course correction, ground stations were unable to receive meaningful communications from CAPSTONE, prompting Advanced Space to declare an operational emergency. Multiple course corrections are required to move the probe toward its intended lunar orbit, known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), which CAPSTONE is supposed to reach on November 13. The recent anomaly occurred either during or after the third trajectory manoeuvre on September 8. CAPSTONE needs to perform seven course corrections to reach its intended halo orbit around the Moon.
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