Flight controllers have lost contact with a small pathfinder spacecraft launched last week to test an unusual lunar orbit planned for NASA's Artemis moon program, the agency said. Engineers are troubleshooting and attempting to re-establish communications.
Flight controllers have lost contact with a small pathfinder spacecraft launched last week to test an unusual lunar orbit planned for NASA's Artemis moon program, the agency said Tuesday. Engineers are troubleshooting and attempting to re-establish communications.
Engineers apparently were able to complete an initial communications session and at least part of the second before contact was lost. The spacecraft has enough propellant to carry out a later-than-planned trajectory correction maneuver if communications can be restored. CAPSTONE was released on a trajectory that will carry it more than 800,000 miles from Earth — more than three times the 240,000-mile distance between Earth and moon — before it reaches a point where it can slip into the planned"near rectilinear halo orbit," or NRHO, around the moon's poles.
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