The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, will be the first spacecraft to fly a unique orbit around the Moon intended for NASA’s future Artemis lunar outpost Gateway. Its six-month mission will help launch a new era of deep space exploration.
Multiple partner businesses contributed to CAPSTONE with support from NASA’s small business programs. The spacecraft was built and tested by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc., a Terran Orbital Corporation, operated and managed by Advanced Space, and will be launched by Rocket Lab USA, Inc.
NASA’s Psyche mission is preparing for a 1.5 billion-mile (2.4 billion-kilometer) solar-powered trip to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name.
In a cleanroom at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February 2022, twin solar arrays were attached to the spacecraft body, unfolded lengthwise, and then re-stowed as tests on Psyche continue. The five-panel, cross-shaped solar arrays are the largest ever installed on a spacecraft at JPL, so engineers had to test them one at a time.
Psyche is expected to launch no earlier than August 2022. About an hour after launch, the arrays will deploy and latch into place in a sequential process that will take 7 ½ minutes per array. They will then provide power for the journey to Psyche and for operating the three science instruments. In total, the solar arrays are 37 feet (11.3 meters) long. Only the three center panels can be deployed at JPL; the two cross panels on each wing are deployed using specialized equipment at Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, where the arrays and spacecraft chassis were built. When they deploy fully in flight, the spacecraft will be about the size of a singles tennis court.
Psyche is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2026 and spend nearly two years making increasingly close orbits. Scientists think the asteroid Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, the building block of an early rocky planet, which would provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEO). It will deliberately crash a space probe into the double asteroid Didymos to test whether the kinetic energy of a spacecraft impact could successfully deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. DART is a joint project between NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), administered by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, with several NASA laboratories and offices providing technical support. International partners, such as the space agencies of Europe, Italy, and Japan, are contributing to related or subsequent projects. DART was launched on 24 November 2021, at 06:21:02 UTC, with collision slated for 26 September 2022.
DART is an impactor, mass of 610 kg (1,340 lb), that hosts no scientific payload other than a Sun sensor, a star tracker, and a 20 cm (7.9 in) aperture camera (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation – DRACO) based on Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) onboard New Horizons spacecraft to support autonomous navigation to impact the small asteroid’s moon at its center.
It is estimated that the impact of the 500 kg (1,100 lb) DART at 6.6 km/s (4.1 mi/s) will produce a velocity change on the order of 0.4 mm/s, which leads to a small change in trajectory of the asteroid system, but over time, it leads to a large shift of path. Over a span of millions of kilometers, the cumulative trajectory change would eliminate the risk of a previously-Earth-bound asteroid hitting Earth. The actual velocity change and orbital shift will be measured a few years later by a spacecraft called Hera that would do a detailed reconnaissance and assessment. Hera was approved in November 2019.
DART spacecraft uses the NEXT ion thruster, a type of solar electric propulsion. It will be powered by 22 m2 (240 sq ft) solar arrays to generate the ~3.5-kW needed to power the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) engine. The spacecraft’s solar arrays use a Roll Out Solar Array (ROSA) design, and this was tested on the International Space Station in June 2017 as part of Expedition 52, delivered to the station by the SpaceX CRS-11 commercial cargo mission.
Using ROSA as the structure, a small portion of the DART solar array is configured to demonstrate Transformational Solar Array technology, which has very-high-efficiency solar cells and reflective concentrators providing three times more power than current solar array technology.
The DART spacecraft is the first spacecraft to use a new type of high gain communication antenna, that is, a Spiral Radial Line Slot Array (RLSA). The antenna operates at the X-band NASA Deep Space Network (NASA DSN) frequencies of 7.2 and 8.4-GHz. The fabricated antenna exceeds the given requirements, agrees well simulations, and has been tested through environments resulting in a TRL-6 design.
Lucy was launched from Cape Canaveral SLC-41 on 16 October 2021, at 09:34:00.192 UTC on the 401 variant of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle, after which it will gain two gravity assists from Earth; one in 2022, and one in 2024. In 2025, it will fly by the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which was named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominin fossil. In 2027, it will arrive at the L4 Trojan cloud (the Greek camp of asteroids that orbits about 60° ahead of Jupiter), where it will fly by four Trojans, 3548 Eurybates (with its satellite), 15094 Polymele, 11351 Leucus, and 21900 Orus. After these flybys, Lucy will return to Earth in 2031 for another gravity assist toward the L5 Trojan cloud (the Trojan camp which trails about 60° behind Jupiter), where it will visit the binary Trojan 617 Patroclus with its satellite Menoetius in 2033. The mission may end with the Patroclus–Menoetius flyby, but at that point Lucy will be in a stable, 6-year orbit between the L4 and L5 clouds, and a mission extension will be possible.
Three instruments comprise the payload: a high-resolution visible imager, an optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. Harold F. Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado is the principal investigator, with Cathy Olkin of Southwest Research Institute as the mission’s deputy principal investigator. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will manage the project.
Exploration of Jupiter Trojans is one of the high-priority goals outlined in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Jupiter Trojans have been observed by ground-based telescopes and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to be “dark with… surfaces that reflect little sunlight”. Jupiter is 5.2 AU (780×106 km; 480×106 mi) from the Sun, or about five times the Earth-Sun distance. The Jupiter Trojans are at a similar distance but can be somewhat farther or closer to the Sun depending on where they are in their orbits. There may be as many Trojans as there are asteroids in the asteroid belt.
On October 16, 2021, our Lucy spacecraft will begin its journey to visit a record-breaking number of asteroids. The 12-year mission starts from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where it’ll launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket. From there, Lucy will be the first spacecraft to visit a record number of destinations in independent orbits around the sun – one main belt asteroid and seven of Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids.
Like the mission’s namesake – the fossilized human ancestor, “Lucy,” whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanity’s evolution – Lucy will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system. Lucy’s first launch attempt in its 21-day launch window is scheduled for 5:34 a.m. EDT on October 16.
Lucy is a planned NASA space probe that will complete a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids, visiting a main belt asteroid as well as seven Jupiter trojans, asteroids which share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet. All target encounters will be fly-by encounters. The Lucy spacecraft is the centerpiece of a US$981 million mission.
On 4 January 2017, Lucy was chosen, along with the Psyche mission, as NASA’s Discovery Program missions 13 and 14 respectively. The mission is named after the Lucy hominid skeleton, because the study of Trojans could reveal the “fossils of planet formation”: materials that clumped together in the early history of the Solar System to form planets and other bodies. The Australopithecus itself was named after the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
Lucy is planned to launch in October 2021 on the 401 variant of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle, after which it will gain two gravity assists from Earth; one in 2022, and one in 2024. In 2025, it will fly by the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which was named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil. In 2027, it will arrive at the L4 Trojan cloud (the Greek camp of asteroids that orbits about 60° ahead of Jupiter), where it will fly by four Trojans, 3548 Eurybates (with its satellite), 15094 Polymele, 11351 Leucus, and 21900 Orus. After these flybys, Lucy will return to Earth in 2031 whereupon it will receive another slight gravity assist to take it to the L5 Trojan cloud (the Trojan camp which trails about 60° behind Jupiter), where it will visit the binary Trojan 617 Patroclus with its satellite Menoetius in 2033. The mission may end with the Patroclus–Menoetius flyby, but at that point Lucy will be in a stable, 6-year orbit between the L4 and L5 clouds, and a mission extension will be possible.
Three instruments comprise the payload: a high-resolution visible imager, an optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer and a thermal infrared spectrometer.
Exploration of Jupiter Trojans is one of the high priority goals outlined in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Jupiter Trojans have been observed by ground-based telescopes and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to be “dark with… surfaces that reflect little sunlight”. Jupiter is 5.2 AU (780×106 km; 480×106 mi) from the Sun, or about five times the Earth-Sun distance. The Jupiter Trojans are at a similar distance but can be somewhat farther or closer to the Sun depending on where they are in their orbits. There may be as many Trojans as there are asteroids in the asteroid belt.
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