The asteroid's existence was then confirmed by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and two observatories in Arizona before being officially listed on April 1 by the Minor Planet Center at the International Astronomical Union, a network of scientists responsible for designating new planets, moons and other objects in the solar system. For comparison, the moon has a diameter of 2,159 miles (3,474 km) and comes within 226,000 miles (364,000 km) of Earth at the closest point of its orbit, according to NASA.Ģ023 FW13 was first observed in March by the Pan-STARRS observatory, which is located atop the volcanic mountain Haleakalā in Hawaii. During its orbit of the sun, 2023 FW13 also circles Earth, coming within 9 million miles (14 million kilometers) of our planet. It is estimated to be 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter - roughly equivalent to three large SUVs parked bumper to bumper. He led integration of the propulsion system with the satellite’s scientific instruments and support subsystems along with subsequent testing.Dubbed 2023 FW13, the space rock is considered a "quasi-moon" or "quasi-satellite," meaning it orbits the sun in a similar time frame as Earth does, but is only slightly influenced by our planet’s gravitational pull. Likewise, the moon is a satellite because it orbits Earth. For example, Earth is a satellite because it orbits the sun. Jud Ready, principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and an adjunct professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, has been the project’s principal investigator at Tech. A satellite is a moon, planet or machine that orbits a planet or star. They have to be in Atlanta because some of the most critical steps of the mission happen in the first hours after the SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center.Īlso in mission control: The researchers who’ve led Georgia Tech’s Lunar Flashlight work. Professor Glenn Lightsey’s team in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering designed and built the propulsion system pushing the spacecraft to deep space and around the moon. The irony of taking on the responsibility for mission operations is that all the Georgia Tech students and researchers, who have worked for more than a year on the project, can’t travel to Florida to watch Lunar Flashlight launch. 7): After several rounds of delays, SpaceX has announced a new target launch date of Dec. 11, in the pre-dawn hours, that rocket will leave Earth and Lunar Flashlight will head to the moon thanks to a series of instructions and commands from Georgia Tech.Įditor's note (Dec. In November, JPL drove the small spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where SpaceX took possession of the satellite and loaded it into the Falcon 9 payload processing area. NASAs new moon spacecraft is getting a next-generation communication system. In September, Georgia Tech packed up Lunar Flashlight and trucked it to the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where it was fueled and checked one last time. The team also gathered for hours-long reviews with NASA and JPL to prove they are ready for the mission. The team of student mission controllers ran through trials of the first critical contacts, the scientific experiments during lunar orbit, and even “off-nominal” launches - space industry parlance for a launch that doesn’t go exactly to plan. Preparations this fall for that responsibility included writing hundreds of pages of documentation, operations scripts, and applications and completing five dry runs called Operational Readiness Tests. The team will operate the months-long mission - around the clock, from launch to completion - from a small lab near Tech Tower.
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