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back to article NASA's CAPSTONE satellite is out of safe mode and on track for Moon orbit this month

NASA has corrected the trajectory of the CAPSTONE cubesat, which is now set to reach lunar orbit on November 13. Launched in June, the microwave-oven-sized satellite was on course to enter a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon before the spacecraft suffered a glitch that forced it to enter safe mode. Now that …

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  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    "CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode...

    So it's in, er, unsafe mode?

    Nice work getting it unstuck, guys!

    11 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode...

      Stuck in a reboot loop, and finally got it out of safe mode, into unsafe mode..... ?

      They really should have used Linux and not Windows for something like that.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: "CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode...

        Emergency recovery system.

        An arm comes out with a white gloved hand and holds down the power button for 10 seconds, the arm then retracts

        11 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode...

      Spacecraft live in unsafe mode.

      1 0 Reply
      1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Safe mode

        Yeah safe mode means: it's only and just doing what's needed to stay intact. Taking it out of safe mode makes it operational.

        C.

        3 0 Reply
  2. TimMaher Silver badge
    Alien

    “In the pipe. Five by five”

    And we all know what happened next......>

    5 0 Reply
    1. Sgt_Oddball
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      Re: “In the pipe. Five by five”

      Whilst true, we are talking a satellite the size of a microwave... So less Xenomorph more Polymorph.

      In which case it's man-made and I am not hanging around the thing to see what it can do (especially not in a dressing gown and boxers).

      1 0 Reply
  3. ravenviz Silver badge

    "executed the burn when it was 308,076 miles (495,800km) from Earth". Nice! #jazzclub

    2 0 Reply
    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Yes, considering science and space is primarily being done in metric units, I think maybe El Reg is going to far in it's "North American Style Guide" by converting from metric to "American" as the prime system. And this conversion is glaringly obvious that either El Reg or the press release it was based on did a conversion of a Very Large Number down the last significant integer place, make it look very, very silly. It might have looked a bit more clever if rounded to the nearest 100 or even nearest 10.

      1 0 Reply
    2. CAPS LOCK
      Reply Icon

      Don't talk about Jazzclub

      0 0 Reply

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