CAPSTONE

Mission Profile

Prime Contractors

Companies that built, launched, or operate this mission. Tickers link to their investor profile.

• Advanced Space
• Terran Orbital (Tyvak)
• RKLBRocket Lab
• Stellar Exploration

Overview

CAPSTONE — the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment — is a 12U CubeSat owned by Advanced Space (Colorado) and built by Tyvak that became the first spacecraft to enter the same near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) that NASA's future Lunar Gateway will use. Launched on a Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand in June 2022, CAPSTONE used a low-energy ballistic transfer that took roughly four months to reach the Moon, conserving propellant. After NRHO insertion in November 2022, CAPSTONE has demonstrated peer-to-peer navigation with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — proving that future Gateway and lunar surface assets can navigate using each other rather than relying solely on Earth-based Deep Space Network tracking. The mission is small ($30M) but architecturally important: it de-risked the NRHO trajectory, validated autonomous cislunar navigation algorithms that will be used by Gateway and future commercial lunar missions, and demonstrated that small commercial CubeSats can perform serious deep-space science. As of April 2026 CAPSTONE is in extended operations, having demonstrated both nominal NRHO maintenance over more than three years and additional cross-link experiments with subsequent CLPS lunar landers.

Key Milestones

1. 2022-06-28

   Launch on Rocket Lab Electron from Mahia, New Zealand

2. 2022-11-13

   NRHO insertion (first spacecraft in this orbit)

3. 2023-05-09

   First CAPSTONE-LRO cross-link navigation demonstration

4. 2024-11-13

   CAPSTONE marks two years in NRHO

Related Missions

Sources

1. NASA — CAPSTONE
2. Advanced Space — CAPSTONE