Monday, March 6, 2023

3906 - MOON - Artemis preparations for launch?

 

-   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.

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------------  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.

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-    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.

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-    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.

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-    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.

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-    The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat will act as a pathfinder for this mission.

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-   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.

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-  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.

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-    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.

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-   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.

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-   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.

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-   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.

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-   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.

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-    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.

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-    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.

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-     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.

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-   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.

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-   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.

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-    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.

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-   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.

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-    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?

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                   March 6, 2023       MOON  -  Artemis preparations for launch?           3906                                                                                                                         

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--------------------- ---  Monday, March 6, 2023  ---------------------------

 

 

 

 

         

 

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