Hiroshi TAKEUCHI

A 6U CubeSat “OMOTENASHI” was developed to be the world's smallest moon lander. It was launched by NASA's SLS Artemis-1 on November 16, 2022. However, because of the spacecraft anomaly, the battery was depleted and the communication with the spacecraft had been lost. After we gave up the moon landing experiment, we have been conducting a search and rescue operation till September 2023. But it was unsuccessful, unfortunately. In this article, the mission objective, the spacecraft design, the planed mission scenario, and the in-orbit operation results are presented. Additionally, lessons learned from the development and the in-orbit operation are presented.

This paper presents a collaborative effort between NASA and JAXA to make 3-way Doppler data from JAXA tracking stations available to the Artemis 1 navigation team to improve orbit determination. The paper describes the system configuration and concept of operation of this capability. Testing effort at the three JAXA's ground stations - the Uchinoura's 20-m and 34-m antennas and Usuda's 64-m antenna - are discussed. Both aspects of system testing are highlighted, first on the use of Artemis 1 recorded signal to ensure compatibility between ground and flight systems, and second on the tracking with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as a substitute for Artemis before launch, to validate other key operational functions such as ephemeris processing, spacecraft tracking capability, data delivery, and interactions among multiple operational teams in different organizations. Results from actual support to Artemis 1's Orion spacecraft in November-December 2022 are also presented.