CAPSTONE will travel 3 months under its own propulsion. (Rocket Lab) NASA’s CAPSTONE is a tiny spacecraft weighing around 55 lb (25 kg) – small enough for an equally tiny rocket to send it on an improbable journey. After deploying Capstone, Rocket Lab is planning to take advantage of an opportunity to fly by the moon. NASA has selected Rocket Lab of Huntington Beach, California, to provide launch services for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) CubeSat. Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft will take over next and conduct a series of orbit-raising maneuvers to prepare the CubeSat for its transfer path to the Moon. Paris, 14 December 2020. – Ready for the Moon: Rocket Lab will launch NASA’s CAPSTONE lunar pathfinder on an Electron rocket with a Photon spacecraft in the second quarter of 2021, the company said. Q3 2021 : Wallops, LC-2: CAPSTONE: TLI: NASA: Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) is a CubeSat mission that will serve as a precursor for … Each year, college rocketry teams compete to launch a rocket to 45,000 feet for a $50,000 prize, or $100,000 using liquid methane. Before building the rocket, the team seeks to design and build a liquid propulsion The plan for Rocket Lab’s CAPSTONE mission. Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at UCSB seeks to design and build a liquid oxygen and liquid methane propelled rocket to compete in the FAR/Mars rocket competition. Image: Rocket Lab Once at the Moon, CAPSTONE will attempt to insert itself into lunar orbit, testing out … It will be launched on a Rocket Lab Electron booster from NASA Wallops Flight Facility into a 250 km circular Earth orbit, the Photon upper stage will perform a series of orbit-raising maneuvers to put CAPSTONE into a trans-lunar trajectory. NASA announced on 14 February 2020, that CAPSTONE will be launched aboard an Electron booster of Rocket Lab and Photon from the company's new launch site, Launch Complex-2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), Wallops Island, in Virginia, and the launch is scheduled for Q3 2021. Rocket Lab is currently still awaiting AFTS certification. Rocket Lab's U.S. launch site, Launch Complex-2 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, will serve as the jumping-off point for the CAPSTONE cubesat mission to the moon. Launch is currently scheduled for mid- to late 2021. CAPSTONE will be boosted moonward by Rocket Lab's Electron launcher and the firm's Photon spacecraft with liftoff from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 2 … The CAPSTONE satellite will act as a pathfinding precursor for lunar missions, including Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that will provide vital support …