It’s been one year since CAPSTONE separated from its launch vehicle to become the first commercial spacecraft operating at the Moon. Advanced Space is grateful to our team members and proud of all their accomplishments! (more…)
Westminster, CO – Advanced Space, a leading space tech solutions company, is supporting the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) by creating technology that enables deep space and planetary exploration, in particular Mars. NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission management and operations will be led by the University of California Berkeley. (more…)
Advanced Space doesn’t just have a spacecraft flying at the Moon: we also investigate missions to deep space.
Last year, we conducted a feasibility study for a local non-profit organization (ASTROBi Foundation) that investigated the functions, cost, and complexity of three major components for a low-cost mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus: (1) the entire trajectory set for a spacecraft to follow, (2) the navigation architecture, including both in-space and ground-based navigation, and (3) a low-cost ground system to support the mission. The mission’s science goal is to determine if biological signatures of life exist there. The spacecraft, named Encelascope, would collect its data by flying through the plumes that are erupting from the “Tiger Stripes” that appear on Enceladus’ southern latitudes. The Tiger Stripes are long depressions that have been observed to be spewing a stream of tiny particles into space, apparently from an underground ocean. A liquid ocean is a tantalizing location to probe for signatures of life. The science would require that the spacecraft pass through the Tiger Stripes’ plumes as low as possible, down to 1-20 kilometers above Enceladus’s surface, and the science phase would last approximately one year. (more…)
Advanced Space CEO Bradley Cheetham and two team members of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE™) team, Alec Forsman, Mission Operations Lead and Ethan Kayser, Mission Design Lead, returned to the place where it all began—NASA Goddard Space Flight Center—to share lessons learned from the successful ongoing mission. (more…)
Hands down, it has been CAPSTONE. It has just been such a unique and exciting experience being able to work on developing the mission from a concept into an operational spacecraft at the Moon. The experience has given me the opportunity to work with incredible engineers and learn so many new things. Another aspect that makes CAPSTONE so interesting for me is the development of the onboard CAPS technology. It’s been so rewarding being able to work on a technology that started out as just a Phase I SBIR concept back in 2017 and matured into something we’ve been able to demonstrate successfully at the Moon 6 years later!
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