It is planned that the Gateway station will work on itNEW YORK, November 14.
/tass/. The American spacecraft Capstone on Sunday reached the lunar orbit, where it will spend at least six months. This is reported on the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
As indicated in the publication, Capstone was launched into a "close to rectilinear halo orbit" at 19:39 East Coast time (03:39 Moscow Time on November 14). In the future, it is planned that the Gateway lunar station will operate in this orbit. In the next five days, Capstone will carry out maneuvers to adjust the orbit, after which specialists will begin processing data to confirm that the device does not leave the specified orbit.
The launch of Capstone to the Moon took place at the end of June from the cosmodrome on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand using the Electron launch vehicle of the American company Rocket Lab. The start of the mission was repeatedly postponed due to the need for additional work to prepare for the flight.
The tasks of the device include the calculation of the orbit for the future Gateway lunar station. Its mass is about 25 kg.
NASA announced in the spring of 2019 that the astronaut landing program on the Moon, called Artemis, includes three stages. The first is the launch into space of the Orion spacecraft using the new Space Launch System launch vehicle, which in unpiloted mode will make several orbits around the Moon and return to Earth. The second is a flyby of a natural satellite of the Earth already with a crew on board, which is planned for 2023. At the third stage in 2025, NASA expects to deliver astronauts to the Moon, and then send them to Mars in the mid-2030s.
