NASA's Lunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft successfully completed its second trajectory correction maneuver beginning around 11:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday. CAPSTONE will perform several such maneuvers during its four-month journey into lunar orbit to refine its trajectory to the moon.
The next trajectory correction exercise is scheduled for late July. CAPSTONE is taking a long but fuel-efficient route to the moon, flying about 958,000 miles (1.54 million kilometers) from Earth before returning to its nearly straight-line halo orbit.
After launch on June 28, CAPSTONE was connected to Rocket Lab's Photon upper stage in Earth orbit, which steered it to the moon. After CAPSTONE was successfully deployed and commissioned on July 4, the spacecraft encountered communication problems when contacting the Deep Space Network (DSN). The mission team led by Advanced Space Corporation reestablished contact with CAPSTONE at 9:26 a.m. EST on July 6. The task team determined the root cause of the communications issue and successfully completed the first trajectory correction maneuver on July 7.
