What is CAPSTONE? All about NASA's mission that would decide lunar space station's fate

The US space agency NASA has an ambitious plan of building a space station called 'Gateway' that will be installed in the moon’s orbit. The space station will be built under the Artemis program which begins later this year and the outpost will serve as a connecting point between the Earth and the Moon. But before NASA and its international space partners start working on the lunar station, the American agency has prepared a new mission named CAPSTONE.

What is the NASA CAPSTONE mission?

(Orbit of CAPSTONE CubeSat around the Moon; Image: NASA)

Short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, the CAPSTONE mission will be launched later this month. Currently, under development, CAPSTONE is a CubeSat that NASA says will test the elongated and halo-shaped lunar orbit before the launch of Gateway. Weighing 25 kilograms, the CubeSat has been built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems and will be launched by Rocket Lab from New Zealand. 

"During its journey along this path, CAPSTONE will test out spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation and communications systems with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, another spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. By demonstrating that two orbiting spacecraft can communicate and track their positions independent of Earth, NASA is showing how future missions could pinpoint their place in space as they reach for more distant destinations", NASA said in a statement.

According to NASA, the satellite is the size of a microwave oven and will study the lunar orbit for at least six months. During its operation, CAPSTONE will collect data near the Moon as it drifts as far as 76,000 kilometers from the lunar surface and comes as close as 3,400 kilometers over the lunar north pole in a week. Notably, the CubeSat will circle the Moon in the same orbit which has been planned for the Gateway. The satellite will basically reduce logistical uncertainties by validating the power and propulsion requirements for maintaining its orbit and hence give an idea about the requirements of the Gateway. Funded by NASA, the mission worth $13.7 million will be the first wherein a spacecraft would test this lunar orbit.