NASA's tiny lunar probe arrives at the Moon after 4-month journey through space

NASA's CAPSTONE spacecraft arrived at its orbit at the Moon Sunday evening after a four-month journey through space, the agency said on Sunday. The spacecraft is now in a special orbit around the Moon, called the near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), the same orbit that will be used by Gateway, the Moon-orbiting space station that will support the agency's upcoming Artemis missions.

CAPSTONE. short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, launched on June 28, 2022, aboard a Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

The mission is owned by Advanced Space on behalf of NASA and operations are performed jointly by teams at Advanced Space and Terran Orbital.

What's next?

According to NASA and Advanced Space, in the next five days, CAPSTONE will perform two additional clean-up maneuvers to refine its orbit. Following these maneuvers, the team will review data to confirm that the spacecraft remains on track in the NRHO.