NASA contacts with a satellite that broke away from Earth's orbit

Multimedia

6-07-2022, 23:59

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INA - SOURCES

NASA has reestablished contact with one of its satellites that stopped communicating on its way to the moon.

Engineers were able to contact the tiny CubeSat on Wednesday after it ceased communication with the Deep Space Network on Tuesday. The DSN is NASA's radio antenna network that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions as well as some orbiting Earth.

The CubeSat is the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, also known as CAPSTONE. The satellite left Earth's orbit Monday, marking an important milestone on its planned four-month journey to the moon.

The connection difficulties forced the mission team to delay the satellite's first trajectory correction maneuver originally scheduled for July 5, NASA said. These are a series of planned corrections to increase the accuracy of the orbit transfer to the moon.