NASA’s Artemis 1 mission launched 10 cubesats. That’s how they do it

Some of the Artemis 1 mission’s cubesats are successfully operating after the mission’s launch to the moon on November 16, but a handful are struggling in deep space.

Artemis 1the first flight of Artemis programlaunched early Wednesday morning (November 16). NASA is huge Space launch system The rocket successfully launched without a crew Orion a spacecraft on a journey to the moon along with a group of cubesats aimed at various scientific missions in deep space.

As of November 18, NASA officials have confirmed ArgoMoon, Biosentinel, Equuleus, LunaH cardand AMATENASHI all were operational, although OMOTENASHI has been experiencing problems in the following days and may have had one last chance to contact Earth, according to one of the mission’s scientists. Most other spacecraft have also registered since then, although some are experiencing problems.

In the photos: Spectacular views of the debut of NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket to the moon

NASA charged some batteries on the cubesats after the Artemis 1 stack was rolled back into storage during a hurricane in September, but couldn’t get to all of them due to design or access issues (the cubesats would have had to be removed, further delaying the launch).

The agency did not provide official information about what cubesats were or were not recharged, although space watchers are discussing these possibilities on social media and on the forums (opens in a new tab) based on whatever information they could gather from the people involved in the various missions.

However, impressive images are already coming in from ArgoMoon, showing both month and Earth, according to tweets from the official account.

EQUULEUS and Luna-H-Map were on their way to their lunar flybys, according to their official Twitter accounts when they were last updated.

Lunar IceCube was confirmed healthy after deployment on Nov. 17, according to the official Twitter account.

The CubeSat to study solar particles (CuSP) has been regularly checking information on NASA’s Deep Space Network since launch, according to an update on Twitter from a person working at one of the dishes in Canberra, Australia.

However, other spacecraft have been struggling and have not made contact with Earth since launch.

OMOTENASHI has passed the expected deadline to register for the pending month landing and its status at the moment remains uncertain.

A Terran Orbital that controls Spaceship LunIKhas not provided an update on its deployment since its November 16 launch. Reports from users on Twitter suggest that the spacecraft may experience anomalies after launching into space.

Near-Earth Asteroid Explorer (NEA). has also been silent since launch, although efforts are underway to restore it using NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna.

Radio communication is also not yet set up for the civilian scientist cubesat Team Milesaccording to people on Twitter listening to CubeSats.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why am I taller (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).