The launch of NASA’s monthly CAPSTONE campaign has been postponed for another week until before June 13.
The 55-kilometer CAPSTONE spacecraft (25 pounds) will rise to the top of the Rocket Lab Electron booster fitted with a Lunar Photon top, rising into space from the Rocket Lab’s Zealand launch area.
The removal was intended for June 6. But CAPSTONE (abbreviated as “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment”) will now be operational before June 13, Rocket Lab tweeted Tuesday (opens the new tab.) (May 31), explaining that more time is needed “to support the final implementation and evaluation of Photon readiness.”
This is the second delay in the launch of CAPSTONE in the last two weeks. The cube was scheduled to take off on May 31, but NASA announced on May 20 that the target date had shifted to June 6 without explaining why.
However, the work still has a restroom; the CAPSTONE launch window starts on June 22.
CAPSTONE’s primary goal is to test the strength of the nearly rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) near the moon to ensure that it is a haven for the future NASA space station Gateway – an integral part of the Artemis lunar system – to stop the store.
That elliptical orbit would take CAPSTONE, along with Gateway, about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the south and 43,500 miles (70,000 km) away.
CAPSTONE will also carry out more experiments and navigation tests with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, circling the Earth’s closest neighbor since 2009.
