NASA regains control of CAPSTONE lunar orbiter after a tumble
NASA is back in control of its CAPSTONE spacecraft after the lunar orbiter lost power and communications and spent weeks powered down in safe mode while tumbling through the void.
Communications-wise, the bird went silent for 24 hours until some telemetry finally got through to Earth. At that point, engineers knew the spacecraft was spinning through space, had lost or was losing power, and was repeatedly rebooting itself. The twirling probe was still pretty much on course for the Moon but had to be brought back to normal working order.
Soon the boffins, primarily those at Terran Orbital, were able to figure out and send a message to CAPSTONE – short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment – to bring it back into a good operating state. It was next determined the bird was then running in safe mode and spinning in a stable manner. That gave the team hope the microwave-oven-size satellite could be fully recovered.
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