CAPSTONE in orbit near the Moon: After being released from Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus, CAPSTONE will use its propulsion system to travel for approximately three months before entering orbit around the Moon. Credit: Illustration by NASA/Daniel Rutter
The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), a tiny CubeSat about the size of a microwave oven and weighing only 55 pounds (25 kg), has left low Earth orbit and begun its autonomous journey to the Moon.
After its June 28 launch, CAPSTONE circled Earth attached to Rocket Lab’s Photon upper stage, which maneuvered CAPSTONE into position for its journey to the Moon. The Photon engines fired seven times over the past six days at key moments to raise the highest point of the orbit to about 810,000 miles (1,300,000 km) from Earth before launching the CAPSTONE CubeSat on its ballistic lunar transfer trajectory to the Moon . The spacecraft is now operated by the Advanced Space and Terran Orbital teams.
CAPSTONE communicates with Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network en route to the Moon.
CAPSTONE will now use its own propulsion and the Sun’s gravity to travel the rest of the way to the Moon, a four-month journey that will see CAPSTONE enter its near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon on November 13, 2022. The gravity-driven runway will dramatically reduce the amount of fuel a CubeSat needs to reach its target orbit around the Moon.
NRHO is a greatly elongated orbit located at a precise balanced point in the gravitational attraction of the Earth and the Moon. It offers stability for long-duration missions like Gateway and requires minimal energy to maintain. CAPSTONE’s orbit also establishes a location that is an ideal staging area for missions to the Moon and beyond. The orbit will bring CAPSTONE within 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of one lunar pole at its closest pass and 43,500 miles (70,000 km) from the other pole at its peak every seven days, requiring less propulsion to spacecraft flying to and from the lunar surface compared to other circular orbits.
In the coming days, you can follow CAPSTONE’s journey live using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System interactive 3D real-time data visualization, a virtual CubeSat with a simulated view of our solar system.
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