- 3906 - MOON - Artemis preparations for launch? The most ambitious of the Artemis mission's objectives involves using the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars. Robots have done all the detective work on Mars so far, but NASA now aims to send astronauts there by the 2030s.
------------ 3906 - MOON - Artemis preparations for launch?
- NASA's
Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon and one step
closer to Mars.
-
- NASA successfully
launched Artemis 1 on November 16, 2022 . It concluded a 25.5-day lunar mission
with a successful splashdown off the coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula on
December 11, 2022.
-
- It's going
to take almost three years, and you can’t come home early on a Mars mission.
It's a seven or eight-month journey to get there and you have to wait 15 months
there for the planets to align correctly again before you return.
-
- Between
1969 and 1972, six missions took place in which 12 people walked on the surface
of the moon. A significant step on this
ambitious journey will be a crewed mission to the surface of the moon under the
Artemis program.
-
- The
Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation
Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat will act as a pathfinder for this mission.
-
- Set to
launch in 2022, CAPSTONE will orbit the moon assisting the navigation
technologies of future missions and verifying the dynamics of a halo-shaped
orbit around Earth's natural satellite, thus reducing the risk to future
spacecraft.
-
- Though the
CAPSTONE mission is planned to last just six months, it will assist in the
Artemis program, set to land humans on the lunar surface again by the
mid-2020s.
-
- CAPSTONE is
a cubesat weighing just 55 pounds and is about the size of a microwave oven,
according to NASA. The craft is with solar arrays, a camera, and antennae that
facilitate communication and navigation.
-
- Carrying the
tiny CAPSTONE craft to space is an Electron rocket. The reusable rocket designed for the launch
of multiple tiny satellites at a time will use a brand-new Lunar Photon
satellite upper stage to eject CAPSTONE to a highly efficient transfer orbit to
the Moon.
-
- Following an
estimated three-month-long journey CAPSTONE will arrive at the moon and orbit
within 1,000 miles of one lunar pole during its near passage and to within
43,500 miles from the other pole at its peak, occurring approximately every
seven days.
-
- CAPSTONE's
primary mission is to test this unique highly elliptical orbit around the moon.
Officially called a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) this lunar orbit is
located at a precise and stable balance point in the gravitational interaction
between the Earth and the moon.
-
- A craft in
such a highly elliptical NRHO should require less propulsion when flying to and
from the Moon's surface than would be required by craft in more circular
orbits. This is because, unlike most halo orbits, an NRHO is marginally stable,
requiring the use of small amounts of propellants to maintain.
-
- CAPSTONE
will explore such an energy-efficient orbit for six months allowing scientists
to assess its characteristics and requirements like power and propulsion that
are needed to maintain it. That means the test orbit of CAPSTONE should point
to the ideal staging area for future missions to the moon.
-
- Another of
the key tasks of CAPSTONE will be the testing of spacecraft-to-spacecraft
navigation systems. Managing this is a second payload comprised of a flight computer
and radio calculating CAPSTONE's position in its orbital path.
-
- This
peer-to-peer communication with the LRO will help test CAPSTONE's navigation
system , the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS), which could enable
future spacecraft to track their location without the need to communicate with
Earth.
-
- This is to
lead to longer sustained space missions, establishing outposts on the lunar
surface, and finally taking the leap of sending a crewed mission to Mars.
-
- The continuation
of Artemis is next, with missions increasingly in complexity over the coming
years. CAPSTONE acts as an important step in the ongoing program which began in
2017 and will ultimately see humanity return to the moon for the first time
since Apollo 17 in 1972.
-
- The most
powerful rocket ever launched by humanity currently waits at the launchpad at
Kennedy Space Center to send the Artemis I into space. Following the launch
Orion will journey to 62 miles above the lunar surface and then will travel around
40,000 miles beyond the moon, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean around
20 to 25 days after launch.
-
- Following
this, in 2024 the Gateway space station is planned to launch aboard a SpaceX
Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. A vital part of NASA's
deep space exploration plans delivering supplies and vehicles to the lunar
surface, its orbit around the moon will take advantage of findings delivered by
CAPSTONE.
-
- By 2025 or
2026, the Artemis mission is planned to lead to setting foot on the lunar
surface. Beyond this, NASA plans to use the moon and Gateway as a leap pad for
a crewed mission to Mars with CAPSTONE functioning as an important
data-gathering step in that adventure.
Hope I get to write about it?
-
March 6, 2023 MOON -
Artemis preparations for launch? 3906
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--- Monday, March 6, 2023
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