Watch Rocket Lab launch NASA’s CAPSTONE mission to the moon live
After repeated delays, the microwaved oven-sized CubeSat known as CAPSTONE may finally start its long journey to the moon. With this launch, NASA aims to begin the first chapter of its ambitious Artemis program, and lay the groundwork for what would be a first in human history: an orbiting crewed platform around the moon. Before the crewed platform, which the agency is calling “Gateway,” can launch, NASA is first testing a unique, highly elliptical orbit around the moon. That’s where CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, comes in. The CubeSat will travel along that exact orbit (called a near-rectilinear halo orbit) for six months, gathering important data for NASA scientists. To get there, CAPSTONE will launch aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the company’s site on New Zealand’s remote Māhia Peninsula. It’s “the highest mass and the highest performance Electron has ever had to fly by quite some margin,” Rocket La