CAPSTONE revealed in lunar Sunrise: CAPSTONE will fly in cislunar space – the orbital space near and around the Moon. The mission will demonstrate an innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation solution at the Moon from a near rectilinear halo orbit slated for Artemis’ Gateway.
Credits: Illustration by NASA/Daniel Rutter
Launch Updates
- Artemis Blog
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NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission is in space on the first leg of its journey to the Moon. CAPSTONE launched at 5:55 EDT (09:55 UTC) on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand, Tuesday, June 28.
Read more about the launch and what comes next, here: CAPSTONE Launches to Test New Orbit for NASA’s Artemis Moon Missions.
About CAPSTONE
- Mission overview
- Preparing for NASA’s Gateway
- About the orbit
- CAPSTONE’s route to the Moon
- What are SmallSats and CubeSats?
- Follow the mission: NASA invites the public to follow CAPSTONE’s journey live using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System interactive real-time 3D data visualization. Starting about one week after launch, you can virtually ride along with the CubeSat with a simulated view of our solar system. NASA will post updates about when you can expect to see CAPSTONE in the visualization on NASA’s Ames Research Center’s home page as well as Twitter and Facebook.
Multimedia
- Click here to request imagery and video assets or interview a subject matter expect about CAPSTONE.