By: Grace Zhang
NASA has set its eyes on returning to the moon, and it plans to do just that. An enormous rocket with no astronauts aboard will carry a capsule around the moon and back, hopefully before the summer of 2022 ends. Robots will drop off experiments on the moon to collect data and information, mainly on surrounding water in the Polar Regions.
More than half a century after the last Apollo landing, astronauts will land on the moon again. This is all part of NASA’s 21st-century moon program called Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sisster. On June 28th, CAPSTONE (a spacecraft) launched as the first piece of Artemis to go to the moon. CAPSTONE is about as big as a microwave oven, so this robot will not be landing on the moon.
This space voyage is said to be like none other. The launch was originally planned for the Monday before June 28th, but on the Sunday before, they decided to delay one day so that Rocket Lab, a U.S. New Zealand Company, would have more time to complete final system checks. The mission will act as a scout for the lunar orbit where a space station called Gateway with astronauts will be built to be part of Artemis. The post will stand as a place future astronauts stop before continuing to the lunar surface. The mission’s full name is Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. All the data CAPSTONE gathers will help planners make gateway a successful outpost.
NASA decided the best place for the outpost would be in a near-rectilinear halo orbit. Halo orbits are influenced by the gravity of two bodies: in this case the earth and the moon. This helps make the orbit stable, minimizing the amount of propellant needed to support a spacecraft orbiting the moon.
For a change, CAPSTONE is very different from past NASA missions. NASA doesn’t actually own CAPSTONE, and NASA won’t operate it either.. A 45-employee company called Advanced Space owns the CAPSTONE. Advanced Space lies in Westminster, Colorado on the outskirts of Denver. Due to foreign ownership, the CAPSTONE will be launched in New Zealand instead of Florida. It could become the base for private-public partnerships that could let NASA have a better bang for its buck on future voyages from planet to planet. CAPSTONE encourages NASA to collaborate with more private businesses at lower costs. NASA signed with Advanced Space for the CAPSTONE mission for $20 million, and the CAPSTONE launch cost $10 million dollars for Advanced Space.
The spacecraft is taking a slow but efficient path to the moon. Launches may happen any day through July 27th. If a spacecraft leaves the ground by then, it will get to lunar orbit the same day: November 13th.
Dan Hartman who is a program manager for Gateway says, “WE think we have it very, very well characterized. But with this particular CAPSTONE payload, we can help validate our models.”
CAPSTONE will test a new way of finding its position. A group of spacecraft in disparate orbits could in essence set up an ad hoc GPS. In previous NASA missions, spacecrafts would estimate their position from NASA’s Deep Space Network of radio dish antennas and then if needed, push themselves toward the desired orbit after passing the farthest point from the moon.
Mr. Hartman is ecstatic about continuing with the lunar outpost journey. NASA has already awarded a contract for the construction of the first two modules.