NASA’s CAPSTONE, a microwave oven-sized CubeSat, efficiently examined a navigation know-how much like Earth’s GPS for the primary time in May 2023. This breakthrough might assist future area missions extra effectively navigate on the Moon, the company mentioned on Thursday.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) launched on June 28, 2022, on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket to check an modern spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation answer on the Moon from a close to rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) slated for Artemis’ Gateway – a Moon-orbiting outpost.

During the current check of autonomous navigation software program known as the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS), which concerned NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and CAPSTONE, the latter despatched a sign to LRO to measure the space and relative velocity between the 2 spacecraft. LRO then returned the sign to CAPSTONE, the place it was transformed right into a measurement, in response to NASA.

The profitable CAPS check will permit future spacecraft to find out their location with out having to rely solely on monitoring from Earth.

In addition to testing the navigation know-how, CAPSTONE captured its first photos of the Moon and likewise completed the important thing mission aim to fly the near-rectilinear halo orbit for at the very least six months. The above image reveals the lunar floor close to the Moon’s North Pole because the spacecraft zoomed by the Moon on May 3.

With this, CASTONE’s major mission has concluded and now the tiny spacecraft will proceed to fly within the orbit and check onboard applied sciences for as much as a 12 months throughout its enhanced mission part.