On Monday, a satellite the size of a microwave oven successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth and is headed toward the moon.
This is NASA signaling a step closer in an effort to put astronauts on the moon once again. The satellite is not expected to reach the moon for another four months, given that it uses minimal energy.
Here’s what Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck told The Associated Press, “It’s probably going to take a while to sink in. It’s been a project that has taken us two, two-and-a-half years and is just incredibly, incredibly difficult to execute. So to see it all come together tonight and see that spacecraft on its way to the moon, it’s just absolutely epic.”
Beck added that the project cost $33 million, which, in the world of space exploration, is pocket change. “For some tens of millions of dollars, there is now a rocket and a spacecraft that can take you to the moon, to asteroids, to Venus, to Mars. It’s an insane capability that’s never existed before.”
And here’s what NASA said in a press release:
“Now, CAPSTONE will use its own propulsion and the Sun’s gravity to navigate the rest of the way to the Moon, a four-month journey that will have CAPSTONE inserting into its near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon on Nov. 13. The gravity-driven track will dramatically reduce the amount of fuel the CubeSat needs to get to its target orbit around the Moon.”
The Capstone is supposed to send back important information for months as the first satellite to go into a new orbit around the moon called a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This oval-shaped orbit extends from one end passing close to the moon to the other that is far from it.
The experimental craft is part of a move to create spacecraft that uses little fuel. “There’s a number of really cool missions that we can actually do with it,” Beck said.
NASA plans to eventually put a space station into the orbital path that astronauts will be able to descend to the moon from as part of the agency’s Artemis program.
Sources: DailyWire, APnews, NASA
