Dhathri Astronomy Blog

The Mission Aqua Hi everyone, today is a special day to save some valuable time and learn something new. So, let’s not wait!   Intro   Today, I will introduce this mission and the info. This mission name is called Aqua. As you can see, the name of it is “Aqua”, it studies water bodies of Earth and more. It carries a lot of information about our planet.    Aqua   Aqua is an international satellite mission. Launched on May 4, 2002, has several/six instruments: AIRS, AMSR-E, AMSU-A, CERES, HSB, and MODIS. Phew!! That was a lot of instruments, that’s why it carries a lot of information.   The whole management of the Aqua mission is located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This means the management of testing the spacecraft and integration of this spacecraft. Primarily, the management of integration and testing of the spacecraft. A lot of agencies, countries, and universities are also a part of Aqua. Aqua’s science teams are from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Japan,

       Info about CAPSTONE Hi everyone, this is an exciting day to start something new to learn. Aha! Perfect. Let’s begin!   Intro   CAPSTONE is a very important part of Artemis. This mission is to mainly, reduce any risk. Importantly, it will be home to Gateway. It will also study any characteristics of the Moon that will add up some confidence to the future plans of Artemis. But this orbiter isn’t going blast off and orbit the Moon, it will do it in a special way. (To learn more about this “special way” read more!)     CAPSTONE CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a lunar orbiter for the Artemis mission. It is just a microwave oven sized Cubesat that weighs 55 pounds (25 kilograms). This lunar orbiter is operated and owned by Advanced Space in Westminster, Colorado.  To see this important orbiter, visit https://eyes.nasa.gov/     Well, the special way is called   NRHO (Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit) i