Artemis Orders Today, But CubeSat Gets To The Moon First

CAPSTONE has reached the orbit of the Moon. (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA - Soon the Moon will have guests from the Artemis I mission, namely the giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. But before that, the CAPSTONE or small cube satellite had already reached orbit last week.

CAPSTONE became the first CubeSat or mini-satellite to visit the Moon. The 55-pound CAPSTONE stands for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Operations and Navigation Experiment.

He reached Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) at 19:39 EST on Sunday evening, November 13 after launching late June.

The NRHO orbit on the CAPSTONE mission is a path NASA wants easy to track by future Gateway space stations in support of space exploration.

Gateway is humanity's first space station in lunar orbit to support NASA's space exploration plan. Gateway will be cared for by humans and will support future Artemis missions, which will revive exploration of the Moon and space in the long-term led by humans.

Furthermore, the CAPSTONE line to lunar orbit is quite bumpy. The satellite was launched aboard the rocket Lab Electron booster on June 28, starting a 4.5-month round journey.

The CubeSat is very fuel efficient and follows the contour of gravity. Not without obstacles CAPSTONE can reach the orbit of the Moon.

Tim di Bumi sempat kehilangan kontak dengan kenatan itu pada 4 Juli, tepat setelah satelit tersebut lepas dari pesawat ka spacecraft Lab Rocket Photon. Tetapi dengan cepat mengidentifikasi dan memperbaiki masalahnya sehingga membuat CAPSTONE kembali ke jalukan harinya.

Over the next week, CAPSTONE will perform two more cleaning maneuvers to perfect its orbit. Then NASA will review the data to confirm the spacecraft remains at NRHO.

Launching ZDNet, Wednesday, November 16, NASA chose NRHO to support the Artemis mission due to situation considerations. First, this is a low lunar orbit, and the right place to track close to the lunar surface, NRHO completes its orbit every two hours, but requires more propellants due to the Moon's gravitational pull than it needs to last up to 15 years.

There is also a retrograde orbit, which is much more fuel-efficient and surrounds the Moon once every two weeks, but extra distance will make it difficult for Gateway to reach the Moon's surface.

NRHO exists between two orbits, providing closer access to the surface and better fuel efficiency.

"Dating almost like a necklace from the Moon, NRHO is a balanced one-week orbit between Earth and Moon gravity," NASA explained.

In addition, NRHO will also provide the Earth's line of sight Gateway, which allows uninterrupted communication between Earth and the Moon.