Following the successful deployment of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 26, mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California, established communications with the small satellite at 5:13 p.m. PST, as expected. The team subsequently received engineering data, or telemetry, indicating intermittent power system issues. They lost communication with the …
Mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California, have received an initial signal from NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer. This indicates that the small spacecraft has powered up. As planned, the signal was acquired by Deep Space Station 36, one of the radio frequency antennas at NASA’s Deep Space Network Canberra complex in Australia. The operations team …
The second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 completed its Earth departure burn, and NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft has separated from it and is flying independently. The spacecraft is now expected to carry out a series of automated processes, including powering itself up, deploying its solar arrays, and orienting them toward the Sun. Starting about …
