NASA loses connection with moon-bound spacecraft

Flight controllers have lost contact with a small pathfinder spacecraft launched last week to test an unusual lunar orbit planned for NASA's Artemis moon program, officials said Tuesday. Engineers are troubleshooting and attempting to re-establish communications.

Launched on June 28 from New Zealand atop a Rocketlab Electron rocket, the CAPSTONE spacecraft relied on a compact-but-sophisticated upper stage for thruster firings to repeatedly "pump up" the high point of an increasingly elliptical orbit to the point where it could break free of Earth's gravity and head for the moon, according to CBS News.

Those manoeuvres went well and CAPSTONE, owned and operated by Advanced Space of Westminster, Colorado, was released from Rocketlab's Photon upper stage early Monday to fly on its own. The company confirmed successful solar array deployment, spacecraft stabilization and battery charging.

The 55-pound spacecraft successfully oriented itself to permit communications with flight controllers on Earth and began sending telemetry back through NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Madrid, Spain.

Spacecraft commissioning proceeded normally for the first 11 hours. But during a second communications pass, "an anomaly was experienced related to the communications subsystem," Advanced Space said on its website.

"The operations team is actively working on the issue with the Deep Space Network and determining the best next steps,” it noted.

The CAPSTONE mission cost roughly $30 million, NASA said: $20 million for the spacecraft, its development and operations, and another $10 million for the Electron launcher.