Rocket Lab launching satellite to the Moon to test path for Nasa's future missions

Saturday, 7 August 2021

Rocket Lab won a $15.5 million contract in 2020 to launch a satellite for Nasa from its Hawke's Bay pad. The New Zealand Government is investing $26m in MethSat, a satellite to detect global methane emissions that will be monitored through a mission control centre at Auckland University’s Te Pūnaha Ātea-Auckland Space Institute.

A New Zealand-launched Nasa satellite is heading to the Moon.

Rocket Lab on Saturday announced its first launch to the Moon would happen towards the end of the year, from its launchpad in Hawke’s Bay.

The mission would aid Nasa’s Artemis programme, and be one of the first pathfinding missions supporting Nasa’s goal of having a sustainable presence on the moon. Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck said the team was “immensely proud” to be part of it.

The satellite was called Capstone – Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. Weighing in at around 25kg and around the same size as a microwave, it would be the first spacecraft to test a unique and elliptical lunar orbit and act as a precursor for other Artemis missions.

Rocket Lab would be launching Capstone, a microwave-sized satellite, into the Moon's orbit towards the end of the year.

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Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck said the team was 'immensely proud' to be part of this mission.

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Those who question the chances of centres of innovation being located in remote areas of New Zealand should remember Rocket Lab started on the Mahia Peninsula, Josie Pagani writes.

Nasa’s Artemis programme, the sister mission to Apollo, planned to land the first woman and person of colour on the moon. The path used by Capstone was what Nasa was planning to use for Gateway, the astronaut outpost to be used before missions to the Moon.

“Capstone will help reduce risk for future spacecraft by validating innovative navigation technologies and verifying the dynamics of this halo-shaped orbit,” Rocket Lab said in a statement.

The journey to the Moon’s orbit would take between three and four months, while the primary fact-finding mission would take another six months. Capstone would pass as close as 16,000km and as far as 70,000km from the Moon’s surface.

The satellite was being launched on an Electron vehicle and deployed from Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft platform.

It was going to be the first time the platform had been used as a trans-lunar injection stage to put a satellite on a path to go beyond Earth and orbit the Moon.

After the satellite lifted off on the Electron vehicle it would go into an initial elliptical low Earth orbit before Photon’s 3D-printed engine kicked into gear and propelled it out of Earth’s gravity en route to the Moon. From there, Photon would do a lunar “fly-by” while the satellite entered a cislunar orbit (between the Earth and the Moon).

The Capstone satellite, which was owned by Advanced Space of Colorado, was initially set to launch from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 2 in Virginia in the first few months of the year. Beck said having two launch sites gave them the opportunity to be flexible and best meet the mission requirements and schedule.

“We’ve teamed up with the Nasa Launch Services Program on previous Electron missions to low Earth orbit, so it’s exciting to be working with them again to go just a bit further than usual… some 380,000km further.”

Rocket Lab was awarded the $15.5 million Nasa contract in 2020.