The First Artemis Mission Continues Its Slow But Exciting Trek to Lunar Orbit...

NASA

NASA’s CAPSTONE Executes Third Maneuver on Track to the Moon (News Release)

NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) successfully completed its third trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) on Monday. CAPSTONE is taking a long but fuel-efficient route to the Moon, flying about 958,000 miles (1.54 million kilometers) from Earth before looping back around to its near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO).

At the completion of the maneuver, CAPSTONE was about 780,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers) from Earth and was moving at about 595 miles per hour (about 267 meters per second). CAPSTONE will perform several such maneuvers during its journey to lunar orbit to refine its trajectory to the Moon.

CAPSTONE remains on track to arrive at its lunar orbit on Nov. 13.

Read more about CAPSTONE’s ambitious mission to the Moon.

Source: NASA.Gov

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This time last month Electron was on the pad ready to launch Lunar Photon & CAPSTONE to the Moon. After a flawless launch and deployment, CAPSTONE has completed its 3rd trajectory correction maneuver 1.25 million km from Earth! CAPSTONE is on track to arrive at lunar orbit Nov 13 pic.twitter.com/mWZZORQZB9

— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) July 27, 2022