NASA CAPSTONE's lunar journey begins: Here's why the spacecraft is taking long route?

NASA's new lunar pathfinder, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), has finally embarked on a four-month journey to its destination i.e. a unique elliptical orbit around the Moon - the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).

The spacecraft launched aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the company's Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand, at 5:55 a.m. EDT (09:55 UTC). The mission serves as a pathfinder for the orbit planned for Gateway - the future lunar space station astronauts will visit during NASA's future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

CAPSTONE will orbit this special area around the Moon for at least six months to test its dynamics, helping reduce the risk for future spacecraft.

Our 27th Electron rocket takes flight, successfully delivering Photon and CAPSTONE to low Earth orbit. CAPSTONE's lunar journey has begun! Thank you to our mission partners @NASA, @AdvancedSpace and @TerranOrbital pic.twitter.com/mTMxZrUlYS

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) June 28, 2022

According to NASA and Rocket Lab, researchers expect this unique, halo-shaped orbit to be a gravitational sweet spot in space – where the pull of gravity from Earth and the Moon interact to allow for a nearly stable orbit – allowing physics to do most of the work of keeping a spacecraft in lunar orbit.

In addition to testing the dynamics of NRHO, the mission will demonstrate innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation technology and one-way ranging capabilities that could help future spacecraft fly near the Moon with reduced need for communication with Earth, NASA said.