… Two Lucy targets in particular stand out to Buie: Polymele, which the
spacecraft will fly past in September 2027, and Leucus, slated for an
April 2028 flyby.Occultation work has already offered scientists two surprises about Polymele. Astronomers detected a small, as-yet-unnamed moon orbiting Polymele
during occultation observations gathered in March. And the outline
revealed so far suggests that the main rock is strange all on its own.
“It’s actually a kind of hamburger shape, a very oblate object,” Buie
said.
Meanwhile, Leucus seems to be missing a chunk of its
southern side. “That one could be duking it out with Polymele for the
award for the strangest object we’re gonna see,” Buie said. “Leucus is
just a bizarre shape and I can’t wait to get there and take a look at
this one up close.“ …
The little CAPSTONE spacecraft is stable, but engineers haven’t yet regained full control as it flies towards the moon.
Engineers are still troubleshooting the glitches afflicting NASA’s tiny moon-bound CAPSTONE probe.
CAPSTONE entered safe mode after an engine burn on Sept. 8, and the mission team has been addressing the problem ever since.
The microwave oven-sized CAPSTONE is a pioneer in cubesat science, helping to expand the reach of these little spacecraft well beyond Earth
orbit. The still-undiagnosed issues may demonstrate the challenge of
operating smaller vehicles in the radiation-laden environment of deep space.
According
to the CAPSTONE teams, the 55-pound (25 kilograms) spacecraft is in a
stable condition at the moment, but engineers have not yet gained full
control of it.
“The CAPSTONE mission team is continuing to work towards recovery of
the spacecraft’s full three-axis control,” the Colorado company Advanced
Space, which operates the spacecraft for NASA, wrote during its latest update (opens in new tab)
on Sept. 30. (The three axes are yaw, pitch and roll, which are used in
aerospace to define movements of objects in the air or in space.)
Teams
are currently “collecting information from the spacecraft, running
simulations and refining recovery plans,” added Advanced Space. NASA, in
its own update (opens in new tab), echoed these procedures and emphasized the spacecraft is still flying toward the moon and “generating more power from its solar panels than the spacecraft systems are using.“ …
