Japan has announced that it has succeeded in building a spaceship. Uniquely, Japan’s space agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), uses steam as the motive power for spacecraft to go to the moon.
JAXA’s steam-powered CubeSat spacecraft, EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U (EQUULEUS), was blasted on its way by NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
“This is the world’s first successful orbit control beyond low Earth orbit using a water-fueled propulsion system,” said a JAXA statement quoted by Interesting Engineering on Saturday (3/12/2022).
JAXA has confirmed that the EQUULEUS spacecraft performed a maneuver that moved it on its planned orbital path to the Earth-Moon Lagrange 2 (EML2) point, which lies beyond the Moon.
A Lagrangian point is a location in space where the gravity of a large object, such as a planet, is balanced by the spacecraft’s centrifugal force, allowing for a very stable orbit. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, for example, is located at Lagrange Point 2 (LP2).
Just as NASA’s CAPSTONE mission tested lunar orbit for the Lunar Gateway Orbital Station project, the EQUULEUS spacecraft will allow scientists to test the stability of EML2 for a potential spaceport development. This spaceport will later allow for further space exploration.
The mission will conduct a variety of investigations, including testing the radiation environment to help determine what precautions future astronauts should take in deep space locations.
“I am proud of the EQUULEUS operations team, which was able to quickly complete the orbit check needed to fly by the Moon shortly after launch,” said Professor Ryu Funase of the Jaxa Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.
I sent the knight
The primary goal of the EQUULEUS mission is to demonstrate low-energy trajectory control technology to reach deep-space locations like EML2 using less fuel.
When it reaches EML2, the CubeSat spacecraft will also study phenomena caused by electromagnetic disturbances in the solar wind, analyze plasma in the Earth-Moon system and observe near-Earth objects (NEOs), including asteroids and comets.
This tiny spacecraft is equipped with a very high-speed camera, a dust sensor and an ultraviolet telescope.
“As a result of the maneuver check orbits and orbital corrections before and after the lunar flyby, the lunar flyby was completed as scheduled on Nov. 22 JST,” JAXA explained in its statement.
The EQUULEUS spacecraft is expected to travel for about 1.5 years before reaching the EML2 Lagrange point.
The spacecraft isn’t the only JAXA CubeSat sent into space during NASA’s Artemis I mission. The Japanese space agency recently had to abort a moon landing attempt with its OMOTENASHI spacecraft.
This article was published on detikInet, read in full here.
(bba/mso)
