After being in a slow spin for nearly a month, NASA’s CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) mission to the Moon was confirmed as being recovered to full three axis control on 7 October. Advanced Space, which operates the spacecraft on behalf of NASA, confirmed that an uplinked control system fix on 6 October was successful and the spacecraft was back in operation. The spacecraft originally fell into a safe mode spin after one of its eight thrusters jammed open at the end of a planed trajectory manoeuvre on 8 September. The fault was traced to a partially open valve. This resulted in thrust from the affected thruster whenever the propulsion system was pressurised. This remains the case and the new control system now takes account of this thrust.
Still from NASA animation showing CAPSTONE spacecraft in its special lunar halo orbit. Courtesy: NASA
The spacecraft’s original mission is to test out lunar retrograde orbit (near-rectilinear halo orbit) a near polar lunar orbit designed for Lunar Gateway which it is expected to reach later this year. The spacecraft carries an autonomous navigation system, using signal from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The spacecraft briefly had a brief communications fault during July last year when improperly formatted command which caused a downlink outage.
