Aug 26, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
First Ever Commercial Satellite to Fly this distance from Earth – Moon Mission for NASA continues to make history.
Westminster, CO (August 26, 2022) Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company with breakthrough navigation technology, applauds their team and mission partners as apogee is achieved for its CAPSTONE mission commissioned by NASA. Apogee, the furthest point at which the microwave-sized small satellite is from Earth, is at 1,531,949 km or 951,909 miles away from Earth at around 1:35:52 pm MT on Friday, August 26th. The dominance of the Sun’s gravitational pull has served as one of the guiding forces to allow the extreme distance of the spacecraft. This is one of the features of the ballistic lunar transfer (BLT) – the transfer method being used by CAPSTONE to reach the unique orbit around the Moon. The CAPSTONE spacecraft will now head towards the Moon. The CAPSTONE mission will test the lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), the intended orbit for Gateway, a lunar space station that will support NASA’s Artemis program. CAPSTONE has contributed insights and shared data with Artemis 1 secondary payloads that will assist them in their mission operations. (more…)
Aug 19, 2022 | Papers & Presentations
Presented at the 36th Annual Small Satellite Conference 2022
Advanced Space: Tom Gardner, Brad Cheetham, Jeff Parker, Alec Forsman, Ethan Kayser, Michael Thompson, Conner Ott, Lauren DeMoudt, Matt Bolliger, Arlen Kam
Terran Orbital: Keith Thompson, Tristan Latchu, Rebecca Rogers
Stellar Exploration: Brennan Bryant, Tomas Svitek
ABSTRACT
The cislunar environment is about to get much busier and with this increase in traffic comes an increase in the demand for limited resources such as Earth based tracking of and communications with assets operating in and around the Moon. With the number of NASA, commercial, and international missions to the Moon growing rapidly, the need to make these future endeavors as efficient as possible is a challenge that is being solved now. Advanced Space is aiming to mitigate these resource limitations by enabling spacecraft in the cislunar environment to navigate autonomously and reduce the need for oversubscribed ground assets for navigation and maneuver planning. (more…)
Aug 11, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission, Community
CAPSTONE Mission is acknowledged for cutting-edge efforts of recent and ongoing technical innovation for Small Satellites
Have you heard? We won Small Satellite Mission of the Year! It’s been a long journey from concept to launch, and we still have quite a journey ahead of us as we continue to the Moon, but CAPSTONE could not have gone so far without the support of our community. (more…)
Aug 5, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission, Community
Congratulations KPLO on yesterday’s launch! We’ll see you out there!
CAPSTONE will be leading KPLO by around 1 month on its way to the Moon. As more missions head to the Moon, safety and transparency are key. We are working with partners to make sure operations in cislunar space are sustainable for the long term.
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Aug 3, 2022 | Papers & Presentations
A few of our team members are attending the 2022 AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference next week in Charlotte, North Carolina. We invite you to listen to their work being presented, some of which demonstrates great collaboration and support from the NASA Gateway Program. Reach out and learn ways we may support your needs. We look forward to connecting with you. (more…)
Jul 27, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
Spacecraft remains on target to test navigation technology and lunar operations to support NASA’s Moon missions under Artemis programs
It is hard to believe we launched CAPSTONE almost a month ago. We have encountered many variables that have kept this mission exciting, and the mission operators have been active. The Advanced Space Astrodynamics and Navigation Engineers have been busy for years leading up to this and just as busy this last month as CAPSTONE flies. An assumption may be that a small satellite means less work but in actuality the effort is just as great if not more so. Small satellites with small budgets and size restrictions require more creativity and calculated steps to ensure precision and execution through the process. (more…)
Jul 12, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
CAPSTONE achieved another positive milestone today after the spacecraft executed the second scheduled trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) today at approximately 9:30 am MT. The spacecraft burn was relatively small as it consumed ~35 grams of fuel. The purpose of the maneuver completes the corrective actions of the spacecraft separation from the Lunar Photon – a necessary and routine step to ensure the transfer trajectory remains on track. Even though this was a small maneuver, this further validates the spacecraft design, which was optimized for precise orbital operations. (more…)
Jul 9, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
The CAPSTONE mission team has rescheduled the trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) originally targeting for this morning to review additional data and perform additional analysis to support modeling of the spacecraft performance during maneuvers. The rescheduled plan does not have any significant impact on the size of the planned correction maneuver which was part of the of TCM executed two days prior. The spacecraft is healthy, communicating with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) and in a nominal state. (more…)
Jul 8, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
As we wrap up an active week for CAPSTONE, and happy to report the spacecraft is healthy and everything is operating nominally. We want to give a big thank you to everyone involved. To Rocket Lab, thank you for the launch and successful separation from Photon. To NASA, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL), thank you for the support during our troubleshooting and resolution. And a big thanks to our teams at Terran Orbital’s Mission Operations Center, NASA’s DSN, and our own team in our Advanced Space Operations Center. Plus, we appreciate the well wishes from customers, industry partners and friends. (more…)
Jul 7, 2022 | CAPSTONE Mission
Commercially Owned Mission Supports Human Return to the Moon with Microwave-sized Spacecraft
Westminster, CO (July 7, 2022) Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company, announced today that CAPSTONE – the spacecraft heading to the Moon for NASA – is healthy after successfully performing its first trajectory correction maneuver. This maneuver is a significant milestone for the mission as it represents the first of many maneuvers the spacecraft will conduct during the mission. The propulsion system is specifically optimized for precise maneuvers such as this. This maneuver is similar in size to the critical Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) Insertion Maneuver which will be conducted at the Moon on November 13th and thus serves as a test from which the team will learn to improve future operations. At time of execution, the spacecraft was approximately 465,000 km from the Earth (~13 times further than the GEO belt and ~81,000 km further than the Moon). The spacecraft had lost communications a couple of days ago, but the operations teams effectively and efficiently worked to resolve the issue and communication was restored approximately 43 hours after it was unexpectedly interrupted. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment or CAPSTONE, began its solo journey to the Moon on July 4th as the first launch supporting Artemis missions. Advanced Space leads the CAPSTONE mission for NASA and is the first commercial and privately-owned spacecraft mission to the Moon. The microwave-sized CubeSat will verify and demonstrate operations within a unique and groundbreaking cislunar orbit that will support NASA’s Moon missions under Artemis. Further, the mission will demonstrate a novel spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation technology service called the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS) developed and implemented by Advanced Space. (more…)
