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CAPSTONE LUNAR CUBESAT MISSION TO LAUNCH THIS SPRING

by Jeff Foust — February 22, 2022
CAPSTONE is expected to launch some time this spring on a Rocket Lab Electron
and arrive in lunar orbit three months later, following a trajectory designed to
minimize the required propellant. Credit: Advanced Space/Tyvak, a Terran Orbital
Company

WASHINGTON — A cubesat mission to test a lunar orbit critical to NASA’s Artemis
program is in the final stages of preparations for a launch this spring.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation
Experiment, or CAPSTONE, spacecraft is a cubesat mission that will test
operations in the near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the moon that will
be used by Artemis missions, including the lunar Gateway. NASA selected
Colorado-based Advanced Space to develop the mission in 2019.

The spacecraft is nearly ready for launch. “We are at a really critical stage
for the mission. The hardware is all together and is going into testing,” Brad
Cheetham, chief executive of Advanced Space, said during a panel at the 24th
Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 17.

Advanced Space said Feb. 18 that it completed the fourth in a series of
operational readiness tests for CAPSTONE, simulating a week of operations in
lunar orbit. That included tests of one aspect of the mission, crosslinks with
the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft to determine its position without
the assistance of ground stations. “It’s basically a peer-to-peer GPS-like
system for the moon,” said Cheetham.

The spacecraft itself, built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, is what he called
a “12U XL” cubesat, a 12-unit cubesat with a radio tower on top that extends its
size. It will launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket using a version of that
company’s Photon satellite bus to send the stage on a lunar trajectory.

CAPSTONE will not go directly to the moon but instead follow a “ballistic lunar
transfer” that will take it out as far as 1.5 million kilometers before
returning into lunar orbit. That transfer, which will take about three months to
complete, it designed to save propellant and make the mission feasible using a
cubesat launched on a small rocket.

“It’s a key enabling technology for CAPSTONE,” Cheetham said of that trajectory.
“We trade about three months of transfer time for a significant reduction of the
amount of fuel we have to bring.”

Besides the positioning demonstration, CAPSTONE will help better understand
operations in the near-rectilinear halo orbit, which has not been previously
used. “This really gets to us operating in this NRHO,” he said, including the
dynamics of an orbit influenced by both the Earth and moon. “It’s a capability
we see extending not just for CAPSTONE and Gateway but also for a lot of future
lunar missions.”

While CAPSTONE is a NASA-funded mission, the spacecraft itself is owned and
operated by Advanced Space. “We’re operating it and providing the data products
that help inform Gateway and other programs,” he said. That included, he said,
getting a payload approval from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space
Transportation for a commercial launch of CAPSTONE.

Neither NASA nor Advanced Space have announced a specific launch date for the
mission. In October, NASA announced the mission was scheduled to launch in March
2022 after previously scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021. Rocket Lab said
at the time that lockdowns in New Zealand, where the Electron launch will take
place, contributed to the delay.

NASA still lists a March launch for CAPSTONE, but the mission is likely to lift
off later in the spring. “We are delivering this spring NASA’s CAPSTONE
mission,” said Lars Hoffman, senior vice president of Rocket Lab, during a
separate presentation at the conference Feb. 16. “We’re going to be racing
Artemis 1 to the pad this spring.” Artemis 1, the first launch of the Space
Launch System, is expected to fly no earlier than April.

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