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NASA鈥檚 return to the moon has begun with the launch of its CAPSTONE spacecraft, which will test the orbit of a future lunar space station. It is the first step in the Artemis programme, which aims to put a man and the first woman on the moon by 2025.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) blasted off at 10.55 BST on 28 June from the M膩hia peninsula in New Zealand. It took off aboard an Electron rocket, before it separated together with a Lunar Photon upper stage, both created by firm Rocket Lab. It is the company鈥檚 first launch to lunar orbit.

Photon then performed a couple of rocket burns to move them into higher orbits. The next five days will see similar burns performed each day until they reach a moonward trajectory 鈥� a path they will follow for around three months until they reach the moon itself on 13 November.

CAPSTONE will then spend six months in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, which ranges from just 1600 kilometres above the lunar surface at its nearest point to 70,000 kilometres at its furthest. Such an orbit is planned for the Lunar Gateway space station being built by NASA and its partners for a launch in 2024, but has never been used before.

鈥淭hey have this theoretical orbit that they want to use for Gateway that means it can fulfil its objectives, but it鈥檚 not been tested yet,鈥� says at the University of Warwick, UK. 鈥淥bviously, they鈥檇 like to test it with something slightly cheaper and smaller before they put a space station there.鈥�

A monitoring team on Earth will precisely measure CAPSTONE鈥檚 fuel usage during the mission, as well as how well ground-based sensors can track the satellite.

NASA also hopes to test a new navigation and communication system between CAPSTONE and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been circling the moon since 2009.

The system will eventually allow future spacecraft operating around the moon to track their own position. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 easy because LRO was never designed for this,鈥� says Brown.

NASA contracted out the management of the satellite鈥檚 launch to private company Advanced Space, while its design, propulsion systems and housing were also contracted out to other private companies. This marks a shift from the crewed Apollo era moon missions of the 1960s, which were designed by NASA and used rockets such as the Saturn V that cost over $1 billion per launch in today鈥檚 money.

鈥淣ow we鈥檙e headed to the moon with a small carbon-fibre rocket and our Photon spacecraft that鈥檚 no bigger than a fridge, and for a fraction of the cost, and size, of those earlier launches,鈥� says Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck.

Though CAPSTONE was delayed from 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic and had several pushbacks this year, it has a fairly high chance of success, due to a reliable rocket and an orbit that is pretty well mapped, says Brown. 鈥淲hile some of the manoeuvres it needs to make to get into this orbit are quite precise, they鈥檙e also quite well mapped out,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f it does go slightly wrong, they鈥檒l have some extra fuel on there to be able to try and correct it.鈥�

While the mission is only set to last for six months, . NASA didn鈥檛 respond to a request for comment.

This is an updated version of an article published earlier this month

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