Artemis I's CubeSats Died After NASA Lost Contact With Them

NASA's Artemis I mission is not just about sending the Orion spacecraft around the Moon as it was also carrying 10 CubeSats that will conduct their studies, Space.com reported last month. Most of them were thriving after launch on a Moon mission, but a handful is struggling to operate in deep space.

The loss of these CubeSats proves that this month is not the time for CubeSats to study Earth's closest neighbor, as per Futurism. Nonetheless, the Artemis I mission is considered a success, and NASA now prepares for the Artemis II mission.

Losing Contact With CubeSats

One of the CubeSat lunar missions of NASA has shot out of the orbit of the Moon. Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell explained in his Twitter post the tumultuous tumble of the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEAScout) after it experienced technical troubles.

He tweeted that the NEAScout accompanied the Artemis I mission last month on its journey to the Moon. However, it did a hard skid around the Moon that caused it to shoot out of the Earth-Moon system entirely.

NEAScout has been silent since launching, and NASA has experienced trouble communicating with the CubeSat. The ground crew used NASA's Deep Space Network of antenna dishes in an attempt to connect with it, but it died soon after launch and thus was "inert."

Another CubeSat lost in Artemis I's journey is the CubeSat to Study Solar Particles (CuSP). NASA announced on December 8 that they had lost contact with the CubeSat, bringing the number of lost CubeSats to four out of ten. It was an unfortunate reminder of the difficulties in deploying and staying in touch with satellites in deep space.

The CuSP was regularly checking in with NASA's Deep Space Network since it was launched based on the Twitter update from someone working at one of the dishes in Canberra, Australia.

NEAScout's Mission

NEAScout is a robotic reconnaissance mission to fly by and return data from an asteroid that was supposed to be observing near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), according to Space.com. After launching the Orion vessel towards the moon, the SLS deployed the NEAScout CubeSat to start its two-year trek to the target asteroid.

It has a solar sail, a thin and light material that harnesses photons from the sun and their velocity of moving the small vessel, which plays a crucial component in the expedition.

According to NASA, this will be useful for determining the asteroid's characteristics, such as its position in space, shape, and spin, and measuring the asteroid's surrounding dust and debris field. Future missions aiming to land on NEAs might find this information beneficial.

CuSP Mission

As Space.com reported, CuSP will examine solar radiation, solar winds, and solar phenomena that could affect Earth and its environs, such as disrupting radio communications, destroying satellite electronics, or even jolting our power networks.

Three detectors on the 6U CubeSat can measure this "space weather" before it strikes the magnetosphere of Earth and potentially sparks a dangerous geomagnetic storm.