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[b]CAPSTONE Completes Successful Maneuver, Teeing Up Moon Orbit[/b] The CAPSTONE spacecraft successfully completed a trajectory correction maneuver on Thursday, Oct. 27, teeing up the spacecraft's arrival to lunar orbit on Nov. 13. "This TCM confirms the preparation, extensive analysis, teams working together and continued hard work to allow this mission to remain successful, especially following the recent anomaly," said Alec Forsman, Systems Engineering Lead and Mission Operations Manager for CAPSTONE at Advanced Space, "Every activity provides many lessons learned before our arrival at the Moon. These experiences better prepare the team for lunar operations." Some numbers from the TCM include: [list][*]Maneuver telemetry shows that the spacecraft propulsion system fired for the nominal duration of approximately 220 seconds. [*]At the time of maneuver execution, the spacecraft was approximately 308,076 miles or 495,800 km from the Earth (~14 times further than the GEO belt and ~69,200 miles or 111,400 km further than the Moon). [*]CAPSTONE has been flying solo in space for over 100 days (125 days since launch, 119 days since separation).[/list] Recently, the Deep Space Network (DSN) performed a test with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to confirm that LRO could receive and return the signal CAPSTONE will be using to interact with the spacecraft as part of the CAPS software demonstrations once it arrives at the moon. "The CAPSTONE team at Advanced Space, Terran Orbital, and their partners has shown great resilience over the past several weeks. Now, as CAPSTONE approaches lunar orbit, we are looking forward to getting into more of the technology demonstrations that are part of this mission and gathering operational data with the spacecraft in orbit at the Moon," said Christopher Baker, program executive for the Small Spacecraft Technology program in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate.
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