A DELICATE BALANCE OF TORQUE AND THRUST: HOW LUNAR FLASHLIGHT USED ROTATING MANEUVERS TO MAKE ONE THRUSTER DO THE WORK OF FOUR

After launch, Lunar Flashlight (LFL) was beset by thruster failures, ultimately leaving it with only one partially-operable thruster. By developing the rotating Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM), the team made use of the reaction wheels to recover trajectory control capability. In this maneuver, the inertial momentum vector is rotated in a plane, while the spacecraft body momentum remains nearly stationary, by carefully balancing the thruster torque, spacecraft rotation rate, and initial momentum state.