NASA's experimental CAPSTONE cubesat mission has been circling the moon for more than 450 days, testing a unique orbit that will be used for NASA's future moon-orbiting space station. According to the cubesat's maker, the mission is still going strong and has long since completed all its primary goals.
NASA launched CAPSTONE, short for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, on June 28, 2022. Less than five months later, the cubesat, about as big as a microwave oven, reached the moon and entered a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), an elliptical path around Earth's natural companion with the closest point at 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) and the farthest point at 43,000 miles (70,000 km) from the moon's surface. The mission's goal was to test a new navigational system and gather data about the forces the future moon-orbiting station will experience while following this path.
