Launch begins U.S. mission to return to moon
A small NASA-financed spacecraft was launched from New Zealand on Tuesday, kicking off the space agency’s plans to send astronauts back to the moon in a few years.
The spacecraft, called CAPSTONE, is about the size of a microwave oven. It will study a specific orbit where NASA plans to build a small space station for astronauts to stop at before and after going to the moon’s surface.
At 9:55 p.m. local time, a 59-foot-tall rocket carrying CAPSTONE lifted off from a launchpad along the eastern coast of New Zealand. Although the mission is gathering information for NASA, it is owned and operated by a private company, Advanced Space, based in Westminster, Colo.
For a spacecraft headed to the moon, CAPSTONE is inexpensive, costing less than $30 million including the launch by Rocket Lab, a U.S.New Zealand company that is a leader in delivering small payloads to orbit.
The company has its own launch site on New Zealand’s North Island for its Electron rockets.
The first two stages of the Electron rocket placed CAPSTONE into an elliptical orbit around Earth.
For this mission, Rocket Lab essentially added a third stage that will methodically raise the altitude of the spacecraft over the next six days. At that point, CAPSTONE will head on its way to the moon, taking a slow but efficient path, arriving on Nov. 13.
The full name of the mission is the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment.
For Artemis, NASA’s program to send astronauts back to the moon, NASA decided to include Gateway, a small space station around the moon. That would make it easier for astronauts to reach more parts of the moon.
The orbit that Gateway will travel comes within about 2,200 miles of the moon’s north pole and loops out as far as 44,000 miles away as it goes over the south pole. A trip around the moon will take about one week.
After arriving at the moon, the mission will last six months, with the potential to be extended another year or more.
Its main task is to explore how best to stay in the desired orbit.
By measuring how long it takes radio signals to travel back and forth to Earth, the spacecraft triangulates its position, then nudges itself if it is off course.