Rocket Lab will launch one of their company’s Electron rockets carrying NASA’s CAPSTONE or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment to the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit of the Moon. This will be Electron’s first mission beyond Earth’s orbit.

Electron will yeet the 24-kilogram – big for a CubeSat, small for a regular sat – payload into its special lunar orbit using a brand new kick stage, the Lunar Photon. It is much bigger than the regular kick stage, and on future missions will take Rocket Lab payloads to other planets.

CAPSTONE will take months to get to lunar orbit after delivery into its trajectory by Electron/Lunar Photon. This is because it uses a ballistic capture method, a trajectory that saves a lot of propellant, letting it launch on a smaller and cheaper rocket at the expense of time.

The ballistic capture method uses the Moon and Sun’s gravity to pull the spacecraft closer to the Moon so that the spacecraft only has to use a little fuel to insert itself into orbit. NASA’s Orion spacecraft isn’t going to be using the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit orbit any time soon, CAPSTONE has plenty of time.

Once in this special orbit, CAPSTONE will first check that the orbit is good for future spacecraft and that a spacecraft can leave and return into it. It will also demonstrate a “spacecraft to spacecraft navigation services that allow future spacecraft to determine their location relative to the Moon without relying exclusively on tracking from Earth”. It will also demonstrate a small atomic clock, also used for navigation.

More Information

PDF: CAPSTONE launch press kit (Rocket Lab)