NASA is working with industry to advance the next phase of cislunar infrastructure for the agency’s Artemis program and Moon Base, including orbital assets and demonstrations. Under a contract awarded to Advanced Space, the agency’s CAPSTONE 02 mission will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations, autonomous navigation, and cislunar communication capabilities while continuing to characterize the radiation environment at the Moon.  

The CAPSTONE 02 mission, targeted for launch in 2027, will use two small spacecraft in lunar orbit to facilitate these demonstrations to support future NASA lunar and deep space missions.  

NASA’s original CAPSTONE demonstration, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, became the first U.S. commercial mission to the Moon and the first spacecraft to operate in a near rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon. This is a nearly stable orbit, thanks to the interactive pull of gravity from both the Earth and the Moon.  

The mission successfully validated communications, networking, and autonomous navigation capabilities while gathering operational experience in cislunar space. The second CAPSTONE mission expands upon these accomplishments by transitioning from orbit validation to demonstrations that will inform future lunar exploration and infrastructure development. 

NASA’s CAPSTONE 02 mission will demonstrate advanced relative navigation technologies for rendezvous and proximity operations in cislunar space. These techniques are more sophisticated than those used in low Earth orbit and are designed to support NASA astronauts as they dock with Moon landers in cislunar orbit, enabling safe crew transfers to and from the lunar surface. 

The demonstration will fly two identical spacecraft of approximately 400 kilograms (882 pounds) from Terran Orbital Systems, Inc. Mission operators will conduct a series of rendezvous and proximity operations and loitering – or formation flying – techniques in lunar orbit with each spacecraft to better understand the trajectories of the spacecraft under the simultaneous influence of Earth and Moon gravities, otherwise known as three-body orbits.   

The CAPSTONE 02 mission will use ground tracking measurements, optical sensors, and celestial bodies to help one spacecraft locate and rendezvous with another. The mission will apply  navigation strategies similar to those planned for Orion’s approach to a lunar lander in deep space, helping NASA build confidence in these techniques for future exploration. 

Each CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft will have the ability to switch between ‘chaser’ and ‘target’ roles, testing a broad range of operational scenarios under a variety of environmental conditions in cislunar space. Transporting crew to the lunar surface from cislunar orbit depends on knowing how well navigation systems will perform during these operations. Since these conditions can’t be fully recreated on Earth, they must be tested in space. 

The CAPSTONE 02 mission also will serve as an operational testbed, enabling testing of three NASA-developed navigation software suites. Each software application will collect data during CAPSTONE 02’s low energy transfer trajectory, which will take it from the Earth to beyond the Moon before settling into a lunar orbit. The spacecraft will carry an optical imaging payload from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to support the navigation demonstration as well as capture imagery of the Moon. In addition, the mission will further mature the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System navigation software that was first demonstrated on CAPSTONE as a method of determining spacecraft position relative to other spacecraft without relying on Earth-based tracking.  

The suite of technologies on CAPSTONE 02 are designed to automate routine navigation tasks, reduce reliance on traditional space-to-ground data, and enable new mission concepts that may be derived from increased inter-satellite coordination. Additionally, the CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft are designed for cost-effective, rapid deployment, demonstrating a scalable and repeatable mission model. 

“This mission represents an important step in the maturation of cislunar capabilities,” said Sean Fuller, Moon Base CAPSTONE manager. “By expanding on the lessons learned from CAPSTONE to demonstrate increasingly sophisticated operational concepts, CAPSTONE 02 lays the foundation for lunar infrastructure and commercial services that support Artemis, Moon Base, and future missions to deep space.”  

The CAPSTONE 02 mission is funded by NASA’s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate with support from the Research and Technology Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by Small Spacecraft & Distributed Systems, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate. NASA used a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract to fund the mission.  

To learn more about NASA’s CAPSTONE mission, visit: 

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/capstone02/

Following its liftoff from Cape Canaveral on July 21 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) hosting the NASA-supported Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) payload is now en route to geosynchronous Earth orbit, where it will use its advanced robotics to service spacecraft.

RSGS leverages in-space robotics expertise from NASA, aligned with the agency’s broader goals to advance U.S. capabilities for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing that can be applied to space commerce and exploration.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the RSGS program uses twin dexterous robotic arms designed and developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. DARPA provided the robotic arm assembly for integration onto Northrop Grumman’s MRV, the nation’s first multi-mission robotic in-space servicer. The spacecraft will inspect and upgrade satellites in orbit by installing small propulsion modules – called mission extension pods – extending the operational life of existing spacecraft for years.

RSGS brings together government agencies and industry to test advanced robotic systems in space. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began supporting the RSGS mission in 2024 under an interagency agreement with DARPA.

NASA’s contributions to the mission leverage its legacy of servicing missions including the Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions and the Robotic Refueling Missions on the International Space Station. NASA support to RSGS program includes the development of dynamic simulation and analysis tools, software analysis for performance verification, and a team of flight robot operators who will support highly technical procedures in orbit. Hundreds of satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. Of those, fully functional satellites are often decommissioned early because they run out of fuel or their equipment becomes obsolete.  RSGS establishes a critical U.S. capability to extend the lifetime of spacecraft in orbit, allowing for more innovative and cost-effective mission designs.

By Colleen Wouters
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

As NASA prepares for a sustained human presence on the Moon, missions will increasingly require spacecraft that can navigate and communicate without a direct connection to Earth.

NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, validated and advanced these capabilities.

Designed to test and validate technologies in lunar orbit, CAPSTONE launched in June 2022 and became the first U.S. commercial mission at the Moon. The spacecraft tested operations in three-body orbits around the Moon, using the combined gravity of Earth and the Moon to reduce the fuel needed to maintain a stable lunar path. It became the first spacecraft to fly and characterize this orbit for future exploration and science missions. Owned and operated by Advanced Space, the microwave-sized spacecraft then received a 15-month mission extension, becoming a testbed for advanced communications, networking, autonomous navigation, and software-defined satellite technologies.

Rather than launch a new satellite, NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate demonstrated that CAPSTONE’s existing hardware could host new applications after launch, transforming the spacecraft into a cost-effective, flexible lunar technology demonstration platform. NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Division will now use the data to demonstrate innovative networking and navigation techniques on future experiments.

“Operating multiple experiments simultaneously aboard the same spacecraft allows NASA to evaluate how these technologies perform together in a real lunar environment,” said Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology Division within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Investments in autonomous operations and resilient communications infrastructure are essential to ensuring U.S. leadership as activity around the Moon continues to increase.”

Two experiments aboard CAPSTONE used software-defined infrastructure to advance two future mission essentials: autonomous navigation and deep space communications. The autonomous Navigation, Guidance, and Control software, or autoNGC, is designed to allow a spacecraft to determine where it is, where it is going, and how to get where it needs to be without waiting for instructions from the ground. While portions of the software had previously flown in Earth orbit, CAPSTONE marked the first time autoNGC was tested at the Moon.

“To really demonstrate that something works, you have to fly it,” said Sun Hur-Diaz, principal investigator for the autoNGC technology development project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The real environment is key.”

Researchers also evaluated how autoNGC performed with limited contact to Earth. While NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas were supporting the Artemis II crewed test flight around the Moon, CAPSTONE’s communications window dropped to just a few passes per week.

Those gaps became one of the experiment’s most valuable tests. Without data from Earth, autoNGC determined CAPSTONE’s location using an onboard star tracker camera to image the Moon, Earth, and other celestial bodies. The camera-based system, known as optical navigation, at times outperformed ground-based methods for real-time onboard navigation, advancing technologies for future deep-space missions.

Alongside autonomous navigation testing, CAPSTONE also tested delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN), a communications architecture designed for deep space. Unlike Earth-based internet systems, deep space communications must function despite long delays and frequent signal gaps. The DTN system addresses those challenges by storing information on the spacecraft when no connection is available and automatically forwarding it once communications are restored. With these demonstrations, CAPSTONE became the first to fly the latest DTN protocols beyond Earth orbit and the first to run them in NASA’s core Flight System, an open-source framework that can be implemented on any spacecraft.

In one demonstration, engineers began transmitting data from CAPSTONE to Earth, but the connection ended before the transfer was complete. The spacecraft stored the remaining data until the next communications opportunity, and transmission resumed automatically. Every piece of data made it home.

“You can imagine an astronaut walking behind a lunar hill or descending into a crater and temporarily losing connectivity,” said Ben Anderson, a systems engineer for the Near Space Network at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This technology allows that data to be automatically retransmitted once communications are restored.”

In addition to its primary achievements, CAPSTONE’s second life as a software-defined testing platform demonstrated that new technologies can be affordably tested and proven directly in their operational environment.

After nearly four years of technology maturation, NASA’s activities on CAPSTONE concluded in June 2026, while Advanced Space will continue to use the spacecraft as a technology development testbed.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft was designed and built by Terran Orbital and is owned and operated by Advanced Space. NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate managed the mission through the Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems program, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Elements of the CAPSTONE technology suite were supported by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. The autoNGC and DTN demonstrations conducted during CAPSTONE’s extended mission were managed by NASA’s SCaN Division, based at NASA Headquarters in Washington.