Watch NASA's CAPSTONE cubesat launch to the moon Tuesday to test unique lunar orbit

[Judi Lynn]

By Tariq Malik published 1 day ago

The microwave-sized CAPSTONE will test a new orbit for NASA's Gateway space station around the moon.

Update for June 27: NASA, Rocket Lab and Advanced Space are now targeting 5:55 a.m. EDT (0955 GMT) on June 28 for the launch of the CAPSTONE mission. Watch it live here, starting at 5:00 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT).

https://www.space.com/nasa-moon-capstone-mission-launch-webcast?utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9

[CentralMass]

1. Thank you for posting this. That was a great launch and this is a fascinating project.

I will follow it's progress on its trip to the moon.

More on the Capstone project.
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/small_spacecraft/capstone

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Damn, mathematics is weird. Here are animations of the orbit

courtesy of Commander Hadfield:

Link to tweet

and a more general animation of "near rectilinear halo orbits":

The weird thing is these are orbits "around" the L2 Lagrange point - which is 60,000 km on the far side of the Moon from the Earth. But as the 2nd animation shows, you start with an orbit that actually does seem to be around that point, but the family of orbits "develops" from that into orbits that more or less end up round the Moon.

There's a side-on view at page 395 here: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979CeMec..20..389B