Moon ahead! Rocket Lab selected to launch Gateway ‘pathfinder’ CubeSat
/Rocket Lab has been selected by NASA to send a small CubeSat toward the Moon on one of the first precursor missions to fly under the overall banner of the U.S. space agency’s Artemis program.
The spacecraft is called CAPSTONE, which stands for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment.” According to NASA, the 25-kilogram, 12-unit CubeSat is set to perform a navigation demonstration with the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and verify the characteristics of the orbit planned for the Lunar Gateway — a key piece of architecture for the overall Artemis program.
Using Electron, a 17-meter-tall two stage small satellite launch vehicle, Rocket Lab expects to send the spacecraft into space in early 2021. Then, using the company’s Photon platform, CAPSTONE will be placed into a trans-lunar trajectory.
According to NASA, it will take three month’s for CAPSTONE to get to the Moon.
Once there, the CubeSat is designed use its own thrusters to enter into a near rectilinear halo orbit, which is essentially a highly elliptical orbit over the Moon’s poles.
“CAPSTONE is a rapid, risk-tolerant demonstration that sets out to learn about the unique, seven-day cislunar orbit we are also targeting for Gateway,” Marshall Smith, director of human lunar exploration programs at NASA Headquarters, said in a Feb. 14, 2020, news release. “We are not relying only on this precursor data, but we can reduce navigation uncertainties ahead of our future missions using the same lunar orbit.”
While Rocket Lab typically sends small satellites into space from Launch Complex-1 in New Zealand, the CAPSTONE mission will fly from the company’s newest launch site at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.
Launch Complex-2, as it’s called, is slated to be activated later in 2020.
According to NASA, CAPSTONE is expected to be the second lunar mission to launch from Virginia. The first was the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, mission. It launched on Sept. 7, 2013, atop a Minotaur V rocket from Launch Pad 0B.
CAPSTONE is being developed by Advanced Space of Boulder, Colorado, for $13.7 million via a contract that was awarded by NASA in September 2019. Rocket Lab’s launch contract is a firm-fixed-price contract worth $9.95 million.
As of early February 2020, CAPSTONE is expected to undergo a final design review later in the month, according to NASA. Once completed, Advanced Space and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc., which is responsible for the spacecraft’s platform and propulsion system, are expected to start building the CubeSat.
“This mission is all about quickly and more affordably demonstrating new capabilities, and we are partnering with small businesses to do it,” Christopher Baker, Small Spacecraft Technology program executive at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, said in a NASA news release. “This is true from the perspective of CAPSTONE’s development timeline, operational objectives, navigation demonstration and its quickly procured commercial launch aboard a small rocket.”
